My criteria:
Drivetrain is about a bullet-proof as you will find, they are easy to work on and parts don’t have to be ordered with a 3 week timeframe. Both of mine average 20-23 mpg overall city/hiway – with the stiffer suspension and a decent set of shocks/tires they ride and handle reasonably well. With a Marauder airbox/MAF and aftermarket tune, they are a lot quicker than you might think. They have probably been some of the most economical and dependable vehicles I’ve ever owned.

I’m not geriatric aged and we own a variety of US, Japanese, and German cars. For my daily driving, I’ll take my CV’s any day thank you. Before you sneer at the “old” technology and platform think about WHY so many of these bulldozers are still out there. Maybe because they continue to function day in and day out as originally intended.

OPPS

i meant hybrid minivans, even tho I understand NYC is experimenting with hybrid escapes or something.

I remember reading about that in Road & Track. I believe it was largely based on Citation running gear and would have shared many panels with it.

http://www.carbonmotors.com/

It’s an interesting idea. Maybe it’ll run afoul of the opportunity-as-competition mindset, but if market fragmentation results in better focused products, I’d root for it.

The cabs in philadelphia are all beat up old fords and chevys, none too pretty for the reputation of the city or the respective manufacturers. A lot of cabbies are really bad drivers too, cutting people off alot. I would like to make it punishable by slow death to be a taxi driver blowing his or her horn once every 2 seconds to attract business.

I worked with a guy who had a marathon as a regular car. Three of us went to lunch, I was in the back seat alone, which probably could have opened out to a full size sofa bed. I recall having to shout for my voice to reach the front seat. It was huge in an era of huge cars. It was also really dopey looking tho, in my humble opinion. There was nothing about this car that made me want it.

Great article! I must say that would I prefer the use of hybrid SUV like vehicles, to cut down on the exhaust in center city.

sykerocker wrote:

A postscript to the Checker story: I seem to remember back in the early 80’s that a retired GM chairman (Ed Cole seems to come to mind, although my memory is fuzzy on this) headed a consortium who bought the company with the intent of designing a new generation Checker and keeping the company as a real car producer. Unfortunately, said president was killed while flying his private plane a couple of weeks later and the whole effort came to naught.

Pity – there was a real intent to keep the company viable.

Indeed, it was Ed Cole, and if anyone could have kept it going, he was the man. Checker is still in business, stamping metal parts for the big three, and making quite a chunk of change doing so.

BTW, if you don’t remember Ed, he was the father of the
tri-5 Chevies, as well as the small block V8. :)

Read more about Ed Cole

In the mid 1980’s, a substantial effort to revive Checker almost succeeded. James McLernon, a former GM exec., bought the rights to the Checker name and built a prototype using GM X-car fwd drive-train. It had a new, practical boxy body; very city friendly. The reason it didn’t catch on: too expensive to make.

Actually, that’s not entirely true. Jim McLernon was president of Volkswagen America and had been working with former GM exec Ed Cole, who, at the time, was part-owner, chairman and CEO of Checker Motors (David Markin remained as President and COO).

In 1977, a group of investors, led by Cole, wanted to revive Checker (possibly because they looked so much like his tri-5 Chevies?). The original idea was to build a cab on an elongated VW Rabbit chassis, but they decided that it just wouldn’t cut it as a cab. Ed knew through his inside sources that GM was working on the X-body (think “Chevy Citation”) and thought it would be a much better fit. But GM would only commit to supplying parts as long as the X-body was made. This was unacceptable to Checker as it would have taken about 10 years to amortize the tooling costs for the new car.

Sadly, Ed Cole died in May of 1977 in a plane crash while returning to Kalamazoo, effectively ending the Checker revival. The last Checker rolled off the line in 1982.

Honestly, outside of a handful of cities (New York, Boston, Washington, DC and Chicago come to mind) I never use cabs when I travel…I rent a car. Even in the major cities mentioned previously, I tend to use taxis only to get to my hotel, and I then use mass transit (or walk) for most intra-city travel. It’s gotten to where most larger cities in the South, Midwest and West are so spread out that having a car is a must, and the cost to rent a car is nominal.

Speaking of purpose-built rental cars, didn’t GM do that for a while with the final days of the Oldsmobile Alero, and later, the Chevrolet Classic (which was actually a rebadged, previous generation Malibu)?

Minivans are practical, spacious, flexible, economical and relatively cheap. I’d rather take my chances in the back of a Dodge Grand Caravan in traffic (better visibility, more room, etc.) than I would in sedan.

What would be a better idea is if Detroit decided to build a minvan expressly beefed-up for the livery market – more durable seats, better A/C in the back, and perhaps the obligatory Lexan shield between the driver and passengers could be engineered into the vehicle. Add drive-by-wire technology, and you’d have a world market vehicle that would work anywhere.

There is already overcapacity in the industry—why on earth would you create a new brand? Cheaper to buy the overflow from existing manufacturing.

There was an article somewhere, uhm I think it was this site not too long ago, uhm I think it was the very preceeding article, that described how existing manufacturers are getting out of the fleet business.
Or are you proposing that someone buy their cars at retail then resell them at fleet discount?

Chinese Checkers anyone?

And to whoever mentioned the Prius as a police car – never gonna happen. Sure, a number of services have Prii as only community service vehicles, but none will ever use them as patrol vehicles. For some reason, I don’t think Prii would be very good in high speed pursuits, or ramming other vehicles, or lugging tons of equipment. It’s be great on fuel, but there are more concerns regarding police use than mileage.

A friend of mine’s dad had a big hulking black Checker wagon for many years. I remember going on a camping trip with his family; there were 5 of us in the car (2 adults, 3 teenagers) along with all the camping accoutrement (a tent, food, etc). Everything fit inside the car, only the family rowboat when on the top. Being a box shape, it was a very efficient car to pack full!

The author of this article is on to something. Cab owners love durability more than anything else. A few of them just laid down and died when Chrysler stopped making the old slant-6. I have to believe that if a diesel is available with the right platform they would go for it.

What you are describing is better known as driving like an a–hole. I drove a 30′ straight truck every day in Manhattan one summer during college, and you must have been one of the 5,000 people who cut me off — in an obvious attempt to commit suicide — who then, evidently, explained to his/her terrified friends, “this is Manhattan. It’s his responsibility to slow down or stop in time.”

It is not that cabs are driven at high speeds, but rather that the pace of NYC driving requires constant rapid acceleration and deceleration. The only way to advance in Manhattan traffic is to take advantage of any and every opportunity. When a hole opens in traffic in the lane you are trying to reach, you must punch the accelerator and turn the nose in immediately, before the hole closes. It is the responsibility of the other traffic to see you and slow down or stop in time. The life of the NYC taxi cab is one of constant stop light to stop light drag races — the perfect application for a domestic V8. The long nose of the Crown Vic is also key to being able to force your way into a neighboring lane. I’ve driven minivans in NYC and when you push your way into a lane, you’re pushing the driver’s seat into harm’s way. It makes you less bold and less effective.

I think there is certainly an opportunity for Ford to segregate their Panther platform fleet business from their retail business. Since the Panther uses body-on-frame construction there is an opportunity for an entrepreneur to correct the space and layout issues of the Crown Vic while maintaining parts compatibility with the existing Panther drivetrain components. What would stop Ford or a potential entrepreneur from designing a taller Panther platform body with a longer back seat and taller/narrower trunk similar to the form of a London cab but with some Bold Moves American styling. If the car were designed with this goal in mind it could replace the current Crown Vic and continue in the current tradition of being sold first as a Police Interceptor and finding its second life in taxi fleets. The problem is that Ford doesn’t have the spare operating capital for anything but the Way Fordward right now. It would take some savvy entrepreneurs to snap up the Panther platform and evolve it.

As mentioned, since the taxi pricing is fixed, small taxis will be in a disadvantage compare to the larger ones. As long as fuel price is not a concern and used initial purchase price is more important, it will always favor reliable, big, fleet cars like Crown Vic. Since CrownVic is a huge market fleet market (police) that constantly need reliable and large cars, they will always be the source of taxis.

If the dynamic shifts to more fuel economical friendly taxi, the next taxi will be from the rental industry or company fleet. Something like a used Malibu, Impala, 500, Sebring will be the most likely candidates, not hybrid or EV (batterys and electronics are too expensives and are not reliable enough yet).

Pity – there was a real intent to keep the company viable.

Thanks for that NHTSA report. I know a guy that lost his wife in a Panther platform fire. Considering just the structural damage to the automobile, she should have survived. So, perhaps my comment was biased.

No BS intended

Given that many a US cab is a retired police car, the feeling is understandable. (I sometimes wonder while riding in taxis about the sorts of violent felons who must have sat in these seats before me. The visual is not good…)

You don’t know many policemen, do you?

Violent felons rarely ever sit quietly in the back of patrol cars. What they do is bleed, spit, urinate, defecate , vomit or all of the above.

BTW, Ford makes an extended wheelbase CV with longer rear doors for use as cabs. Most of the CVs used in NYC are this long wheelbase version.

One more thing, NYC tried finding an alternative to the CV on a number of occasions — assorted foreign and domestic minivans and crossovers. Not one of them could go as far and as cheaply as the CV.

Or, Toyota could just continue it’s march to domination by bringing the purpose built Toyota Comfort taxicab into the states. How is it that Toyota seems to have nearly all the bases covered all the time while GM and Ford thrash about?

Here is the wikipedia page on the Toyota Comfort:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Comfort