Where Old Taxis Go To Die!

[Tom Geiger]

I was fudding around the Internet and came across this site. It's a company that resells old New York City taxi cabs. These cars lead very hard lives, stop and go traffic, idling for hours and roads full of potholes and other challenges. Probably the toughest job a car can have!

Of course there's a bunch of fairly new Crown Vics, probably the last year's worth. What I found very interesting is the miles some of these cars have traveled. Especially the hybrids. Very cool to see Prius taxis with over 300,000 miles on them.

http://www.taxiforsale.nyc/

Edited June 12, 2015 by Tom Geiger

[High octane]

Will you be buying some of those Tom, for your family, or no?

[Danno]

Around here, the majority of taxis were police cars first, used up and auctioned off. Then, their second career uses up whatever was left. I can't imagine buying any surplus Crown Vic taxi . . . it would probably have 1/2 a million miles on its ticker!

[Tom Geiger]

Dan, that's the case in suburban PA and NJ where I've lived. In fact when I lived in NJ I passed a building which had cars and SUVs parked on both sides... one side was all surplus police vehicles, the other side had bright shiny yellow cabs. A common sight to see Crown Vic taxis with spotlights, molding cut where a police shield once was and the "Enforcer" badge on the trunk lid.

NYC and possibly other big cities have a Taxi & Limo Commission and they dictate which vehicles are allowed to be used as Taxis. Early on it was full size US cars like Vics, Caprices and Dodges and no doubt involved some big city politics and greasing of palms. In more recent times there have been pushes to use all hybrids in NY and other big cities. When I was up in Boston I noticed all the cabs were Camry hybrids. In Philly the mix is aging Crown Vics and one company that has all Altima hybrids. I believe all these cars are purchased new by law. A few weeks ago I was on the Pennsylvania Turnpike and saw a trailer load of bright yellow Prius cars complete with NYC taxi markings headed that direction.

I just found it interesting that they were pushing hybrids over 300,000 miles. There was one Prius there with 360,000.

[Mark]

I remember those ads in the back pages of Popular Mechanics and a couple of car magazines in the mid-Sixties, where they'd advertise current-year cars for $1,095, last years' cars for $995. I asked my dad why those cars were so cheap, and he said those were ex-taxicabs and were probably all beat to death. All of the cars pictured were four-door sedans, so that made sense. One step removed from those $40 surplus jeeps!

The political palm greasing is on the mark...in the late Sixties, Checker tried to sew up the NYC taxi business by getting certain interior dimensions into the specs that only their car fit. It was something like floor-to-roof height. Dodge snuck in on it though, by having the rear footwells altered in a bunch of '68 Coronets. If I remember right, it was actually Hurst that did the alterations (they were working with Chrysler on the '68 Hemi Dart/Barracuda conversions at the time too). Years ago, in my area the city fire commissioner got the specs for new fire trucks rewritten, to specify that the truck's engine and body had to be made by the same company, or something along those lines. Whatever it was, only one make of fire engine met the spec, and his brother or cousin was the sales rep for the area. Another town tried something like that a few years ago, but the competing companies took them to court and got that part of the spec tossed out.

As for hybrids, they make perfect sense for vehicles like taxis, school buses, and UPS or mail delivery trucks that work primarily in the city or make lots of stops. There was a story awhile back on a Prius taxi in (I think) Montreal, that racked up about half a million miles on the original batteries. If I remember right, once or twice a year they washed the plates inside the battery pack and replaced the acid, which extended the life of the batteries.

[scummy]

We have a suburb here in sydney australia called alexandria , where all the cabbie places are and they got stacks of them parked up in yards and on the street . Some are smashed up some are just old and parked up but once they finished with them they are used for parts .