The structure of these phaetons differed. Gillray’s picture shows the body hung midway between the two axles, though he may not have troubled to be exact in this respect. The commonest form was the _perch-high phaeton_, in which the body was hung directly over the front axle, the hind wheels being much larger than those in front, and the bottom of the body being five feet from the ground. Others were less lofty. In the _one-horse phaeton_ the body was hung over the back axle with “grasshopper” springs, and “was joined to the forecarriage, which was without springs, by wooden stays”—a very different carriage. This in time led to the _pony phaeton_ used by George IV in 1824. Here all idea of great height had been abandoned so as to allow His Majesty to enter his carriage without the fatigue of climbing several steps. Queen Victoria’s pony phaeton was a similar vehicle, and indeed it was from such a carriage that the _victoria_ was evolved at a rather later date.
“What connexion there could be,” wrote Bridges Adams some forty years later in a passage not altogether devoid of epithets, “between this vehicle and the fabled car of the Sun-God, to obtain for it such a title, it is difficult to conceive.... The vehicle looked like a mechanical illustration of the play of _Much Ado about Nothing_. It was a contrivance to make an enormously high and dangerous seat for two persons, inconvenient to drive from, and at the same time to consume as much material and mix as many unsightly and inharmonious lines as possible. The framework of the carriage was constructed with two iron perches, the outline of which was hideously ugly; but the camel-like hump had at least the mechanical advantage of permitting a higher fore wheel than could otherwise be used. The shape of the body was as though the rudest possible form capable of affording a seat had been put together. An ungraceful form of upright pillar or standard was first selected, into which was framed a horizontal ugly curve for a seat, connected at the top by an ungainly-looking elbow, and a formal serpentine curve behind, from which was projected like an excrescence an ugly leathern box called a sword-case. The front of the upright pillar was continued into a most formal curve, and from its point rose an ungraceful bracket, to support a footboard, on the extreme edge of which was coiled an ugly piece of leather called an apron. The construction of the body was such that it could not possibly hold together by the strength of its own framing; and to remedy this, a curved iron stay was introduced in the worst possible taste.... The fore springs rather resembled the flourishing strokes made by a schoolmaster, when heading a copy-book or Christmas piece, than any legitimate mechanical contrivance; and the motion must have been detestable, rendering the act of driving difficult, and lessening the power of the drivers over their horses. The servant’s seat behind”—not always present—“placed on curved blocks without any springs, completed this extraordinary-looking vehicle. To sit on such a seat, when the horses were going at much speed, would require as much skill as is evinced by a rope-dancer at the theatre.”