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:
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…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.
Just let it die!!!! It truly longs for the sweet release of death.