Do you believe in curses? I never used to. Up until quite recently, I’ve been the sort of person that believes in science, in a rational universe, one governed by understandable laws and logical causes and effects. That’s how I was until I encountered the $800 New York City Nissan NV200 taxi with 375,000 miles that we bought from Copart, because the only way to truly understand this vehicle is by giving up on everything you thought you understood about how reality works. This taxi is not an active participant in reality, as far as I can tell. In fact, from what I can tell, somehow this van must have committed some manner of monstrous karmic crime, and now is condemned to exist in this permanent state of near-obliteration, but always being denied the peace that full non-existence would provide.
I say this because after 375,000 miles of some of the hardest, most punishing driving possible – the life of a NYC cab – this taxi has been denied the sweet release of death, even though it clearly deserves it. When we took the van to a Nissan dealer to get an idea of the scope of work that would be needed to get this saffron-colored workhorse going again, the bill came to a pants-filling $14,406.62, an absolutely absurd set of numbers that, when preceded by a dollar sign, should have absolutely no association with this steaming pile of taxi.
The thing is already blighted, a doomed mechanical being that has somehow found itself on the bad side of fate. If you think I’m exaggerating or being overly dramatic, let me tell you what happened when the taxi came into my possession.
If you recall, the taxi was first sent to our own Stephen Walter Gossin, who had the thing foisted upon him while trying to celebrate Thanksgiving, and then put in a Herculean effort to get the thing running, but eventually had to admit either defeat or a loss of giving a crap, either of which are valid and understandable reactions. Somehow, though, we didn’t give up on this thing, so it was sent to me, with the plan that our own steaming-pile-wrenching ubermensch David would take a crack at it, and hopefully get it motile once again.
But first, I had to get the thing safely into my driveway, and that’s where the Curse of the Cab reared its fierce head yet again.
The cab, no longer capable of self-propulsion, came to my house on a flatbed tow truck, using a provider selected by Nexus Auto Transport, whom we’ve worked with before. That’s all fine so far. But things soon proved to be remarkably un-fine. A quick inspection of the cab didn’t reveal anything that horrific, at least visually, unless you count this very alarming-looking bubble in one of the tires, which you absolutely should count:
What actually started to alarm me more was how seemingly unprepared the tow truck operators were for, you know, towing a car. I’m not going to give their name or anything here, but I think I should note that their performance was, um, not up to my usual high expectations. Or maybe even low expectations.
First, they weren’t able to get the cab out of park because it required 12V of electricity, which the battery no longer felt compelled to provide. I expected them to have a jump pack or some other source of 12V on their tow truck, but, no, they didn’t have anything that could spare a dozen volts. So, I parked my truck alongside the ramp, and we jumped the taxi with it enough to get power to unlock the shifter.
Later. I found the shove-the-key-in-the-slot emergency release for the shifter, which, again, you’d think the tow truck driver would know about? Anyway, this is all trivial compared to what happened next, which was this:
View this post on Instagram
…and here’s an animated GIF of the exciting bits:
Yes, that’s right. Somehow, once the car was in neutral, there was a breakdown in communication between the two people operating the tow truck and responsible for getting the taxi safely off the truck, a breakdown in communications that led to one of the operators believing there was someone in the taxi, on the brake, and the other operator believing that the taxi, with nobody in it, was rolling rapidly down the ramp, onto the street, down the hill, and eventually into a ditch.
Only one of these operators was perceiving the situation accurately.
Yes, as I was sitting in my truck, which was connected by jumper cables to the taxi moments before, I saw the damn thing go rolling down the hill, out of control, driver’s door flapping open, and heading down the hill. I was terrified that it might continue down that hill, picking up speed, and could crash into a neighbor’s house or an oncoming car, or, everything forbid, hit one of the many people and dogs that routinely walk around in my neighborhood.
Thankfully, that didn’t happen; instead, the steering wheel was angled enough that it rolled into a ditch off the side of the road, and had its progress stopped by a helpful, if destructive, tree.
Holy crap. What a mess.
This could have gone so, so much worse, of course, and when I saw that miserable, unfortunate taxi lying forelorn in that ditch I mostly just felt relief. Well, relief and relief’s rhyming cousin, disbelief. Disbelief at what a colossal cluster this whole thing was rapidly turning into. Can nothing be easy with this taxi? Why does this thing seem to be the target of some god’s wrath?
The sad hilarity continued after the taxi was winched out of the ditch, only to find a nice, big log had gotten wedged underneath it, and just to put the big, wet cherry on this crap sundae, the tow truck operators somehow didn’t have a jack, which meant I had to run and grab my floor jack so we could get the big chunk of wood out from under the taxi.
Again, what a mess.
The damage wasn’t exactly catastrophic, but it wasn’t nothing, either. The van’s smack into the tree dented the bumper and put a huge crease in the rear door, shattering the rear window, rendering the rear door well and truly screwed.
As if this thing wasn’t in bad enough shape already, right? I’m pretty sure no one was looking at this van and thinking, you know what this thing needs? A good smack into a tree at about 15 mph or so. That should sort everything out!
Oy. This poor taxi. What awful things did this little Nissan do to deserve this?
Well, whatever it did, we’re not giving up on it. David the shitbox hero will be out here, and we’ll see what we can do for this doomed, unloved, unlucky little monster. Stay tuned.
I am not by nature a superstitious person, but man there are times where bad things you really couldn’t predict occurring keep happening involving the same car, it makes you wonder.
Are you sure it was a tow company and not just an Uber?
Yeah, looks like you got the lowest common denominator on the towing end.
Then again, my parents have AAA, which should offer better quality tow truck options, but when their Lexus Hybrid starter battery died, the tow company tried really hard to fry the entire electrical system! Thank goodness my octogenarian Mom knows how to download and read the owner’s manual. (“ONLY USE THIS ONE SCREW for the ground clamp during a jump start, or you will destroy your entire electrical system!” it said.)
I hope they have insurance for this! Their insurance company is going to be PISSED when that claim for $25 comes through!
The tow truck drivers had one job.
And now they have None.
One to many it seems
You should file a claim for the damages, if only to see the adjuster’s face when you point at the NV.
I had a car for a while that I think bug splat on the windshield would total. It’s amazing how careful people drove around me and that POS.
Ah, the old Fuck You Beater. “You wanna tailgate me? Try to sneak in? Change lanes into me? I have absolutely nothing to lose. Go for it.”
This perfectly describes my 1997 Ford Rustang. It has a cracked windshield, gas tank held in by pipe hanger strap, and four Hella 500’s on a bar in the grill. The rear fenders are rotted out, and after popping the trunk via paracord strung through the back seat you can gaze through each frame rail to the ground. Rear crumple zone is an understatement.
That said the 3.8L V6 puts 151hp/194ftlb to the tire in third gear, so it’s hilarious to drive in nicer parts of town or in winter thanks to the nice blizzak’s it doesn’t deserve.
This is like a person who starts to date a meth addict and then wonders why their credit cards go missing.
COD winner!
And people wonder why I chose to tow my own car across the country instead of paying for a transporter…
I’m sad to say, the tow truck stories tied to this saga are not giving me faith in Nexus’s judgment or vetting of reputable auto haulers.
I suspect their vetting process is to sort by cost and use the lowest.
Are you sure you didn’t stage this? That cellphone just happened to be on?…..
I am curious about who pays for this. If an insurance company is involved, they are apt to total it which might for even more hilarious antics if you buy it back.
He literally only caught 2 seconds of the actually accident. You can see him whipping the camera up.
I think you need a new rear axle, because the camber and alignment on the rear driver’s side wheel is way beyond any adjustment.
That’s that bumper say? Your choices behind the wheel matter? Yes, but I wouldn’t limit it to behind the wheel choices.
Luckily those are just dumb beam axles which should be available aplenty.
My casual observations of NV200 cabs in their natural habitat lead me to believe that the doors on the back are probably pretty abundantly available compared to many other parts, and there are probably dozens of them on the roofs of shops in Brooklyn and Queens that nobody has gotten around to sending to the metal recycler yet.
That bumper? Probably not so much.
Wow! That van was so scared that it dropped a log! 😉
Ha ha, just…WOW…those transport workers really had no idea what they were doing…that was very unsafe and could have been worse as mentioned. I can’t believe how unprepared they were to as far as equipment, etc. Well, it may as well be finally junked now. I would love to see a Checker cab series!
You guys. First that tow company was atrocious. They should pay you more than you paid for the taxi as compensation for their incompetence. You are not doing this right.
Also for projects buy the best you can afford not the cheapest. And if it is a big project buy two with different issues instead of buying parts.
Jason I appreciate your acknowledging how bad this could have been, but I think its worth being crystal clear: this could have EASILY ended with someone being arrested for manslaughter. As you said, thank God it didn’t end that way, but I don’t think we should be making jokes in the comments or taking this lightly — this is deeply disturbing and those operators should be fired immediately before someone gets hurt. Can’t imagine this was the first or will be the last time they’ve come this close.
I work in the courts and people don’t realize how close they are to manslaughter charges on a daily basis. Run the red light/stop sign? Just killed someone. Lost attention for a second and veered into the bike lane? Just killed someone. Didn’t secure your load properly? You guessed it.
Some things are accidents, most are a lack of awareness and could have been avoided, like this incident.
Amen. I think this taxi’s two (!!) towing mishaps make your point: I imagine most haulers, no matter how experienced or careful, will eventually get a car stuck on a ramp (and inexperienced, careless haulers all the more so). It’s a skill that takes some time to master. Call those mishaps accidents. But choosing to offload on a hill AND not checking/caring that someone is in the driver’s seat before letting it loose…
Growing up on a farm, which according to labor statistics is one of the most likely places to get killed, it was drilled into me to take a moment to think “what unlikely thing could kill me?”. Despite that, it is amazing how many near misses I have survived.
Also, it’s amazing how many tow truck and ramp truck drivers have no idea what parts of a car are strong enough to hook a tow cable to. Every so often in NYC, I see a front sway bar in the middle of the street.
WTF were they doing unloading an inoperable vehicle downhill?? It doesn’t look like there was any place to park the thing after it rolled off the truck. Shouldn’t the tow company positioned the flatbed so that once dropped off the truck it would be in its resting place, not in the middle of the road/driveway?
Or don’t let it loose! Those flatbeds have a winch, and they work in reverse, too. Seems like the obvious way to me to unload a total crapcan with questionable brakes to begin with, but then again, I’m not a tow truck operator.
This 100%. An old neighbor of mine was driving his junker Chevelle (he called it a project car but it never improved) and the brakes failed, or were so bad, that he hit a guy at a crosswalk. It was very low speed but it still knocked the guy over and hit his head. They had to put him in a medically induced coma and hope he was alright when the swelling went down. The injured guy woke up but would need much time/therapy to hopefully get back to normal.
Even though the guy lived, my neighbor was charged with reckless driving and some other related charges that seemed to mirror assault but with a car. He lost his license and car and spent a few years doing community service and checking in with the court. Though well deserved, the worst part for my neighbor was the civil suit. Six years of layers’ fees, an initial finding that he knew the car was dangerous but drove it anyway, and was therefore responsible for the injury, and appeals to reduce the settlement slightly. He lost his house, marriage, the whole works. All because he thought the risk of driving his junker, which he had done for years, was worth it.
Given its Nissan roots, it sounds like you need a Shinto priest to bless it and give it a safe driving (kotsu anzen) omamori
That is not a tow truck that is a Ramp trailer and the person who operates it typically is moving cars for dealers to and from auctions. So mostly, if not exclusively, vehicles that actually run and drive. That said a jump box should be part of the standard items in the truck. I also feel that Jason should have his own jump box considering the typical state of his fleet.
I’m also very confused about exactly how this happened. In the shot with the person manning the jumper cables, all the wheel straps that were holding it down seem to have already been removed. So it seems like it should have started rolling the second it was shifted out of park which since it was done by pressing on the brake pedal should have meant that there was someone in the driver’s seat or at least part way in the door.
Yeah, someone needs to drop the name of this towing company. I live in North Carolina and I want to know who I should avoid!
You need to find a different towing company.
If it’s the same company that bungled the initial delivery at SWG’s lair, yeah…
All the anecdotes about car transport have lead me to believe you either pay through the nose and get guaranteed competent service, or you decide to save some bucks and absolutely gamble with how long it will take your vehicle to get from point A to point B, whether it will be in the same shape it left in, and whether it will ever arrive at all, in which case all trace of it, the transport truck, and the company you paid will have vanished from reality as if none of them ever existed in the first place.
Counter argument. This is the luckiest NV200 Taxi. It’s escaped its own mortality multiple times. It wasn’t scrapped after finishing life as a taxi. It wasn’t scrapped after rolling down a hill. It also got to live of its own free will and chose not to mame any human life forms. And now DT is going to get all up in its undercarriage. Somewhere a rusty Jeep is both NVous and pissed off.
Man, the Final Destination franchise has really run out of ideas.
Are you sure these guys didn’t just carjack the tow truck and the driver wasn’t like tied up under the seat, and to avoid getting caught they were like “suuure, we’re tow truck operators”. Cause the signs are kind of all there.
You are putting way too much blame on Fate, and not enough on The World’s Most Incompetent Tow Truck Crew. Also missing from this article is any discussion of the tow company’s liability insurance paying for the additional repairs that you are saying it now needs.
Can the liable party’s insurance total someone else’s car?
Yes.
Well that’s rude of them.
Oh No. Then you’d get a salvage title…That would knock like $2.75 off of the Blue Book on this thing.
This. How come the Taxi was not secured with a strap?
That happened to me once. Just kidding. This series of unfortunate events has never happened to anyone, ever.
There are eight million stories in the Naked City. You have just seen one of them.
I also hear Sterling Archer’s voice, “Eat a dick, tow truck! Ouch!”
Ouch. Oh my goodness, the whole endeavor is starting to be like the Raiders of the Lost Ark face melting: https://i.makeagif.com/media/10-20-2024/f3Brak.gif
Pretty apropos as seeing how relentlessly fash the founder and chair of Copart, Willis Johnson, is. One might argue that it’s what you get when paying cash for fash, ha.
Yeah, unfortunately, it’s looking like the Faustian deal made in partnering with Copart is coming back to bite everyone in the ass, what with the Copart monetary transactions turning out to be disconcertingly and disappointingly far more than the original 800 bucks and the debacles, plural, with the towing “professionals” and all.
After all, it’s to be expected that the results of 375,000 miles of NYC taxicab driving would provide plenty of fodder for wrenching, much of which will be entertaining as well as educational, but that’s a whole different ball of wax from the eye-popping totals that you all ended up paying Copart over the original 800 dollars and the *additional* (and absolutely unnecessary) damage caused by aforementioned towing professionals (not to mention the damage noted in an earlier post as having been wrought by Copart wantonly using forklifts at their premises.)
Ha, maybe Copart will pay you all to stop writing such posts, Ã la the kidnappers in O. Henry’s story “The Ransom of Red Chief.”