375,000 Mile Taxi Trek Day 4: March Past The Arch

I’m pretty sure this taxi has somehow been reading the comments made about it in every one of the stories we’ve run about it so far. I can’t prove this, at least not in any manner acceptable to any actual scientific rigor, but it remains my best theory for why this 375,000+ mile heap just refuses to quit. I think it’s because some of you had said things like this:

“That interior looks gross. The intercom pic – blegh. Nasty. Kudos to you for tackling it. This taxi seems like a bit of a basketcase…”

and this

“I’m not sure where this saga is headed…. so far, I see: Replaced crap parts with crap parts on crap car. Trying to figure out if I should give a crap.”

and this

“Just let it die!!!! It truly longs for the sweet release of death.”

and one more:

“At this point, maybe just light the goddamn thing on fire and invite the whole town over for an epic s’mores party.”

These were all actual comments on articles about this little Nissan NV200 taxi, and I think it read every one of them, and I think it’s pissed. I don’t think it wants to give anyone the satisfaction of seeing it fail, so it’s going to keep going and going out of spite, fueled by 110 octane vitriol, and it won’t stop until it makes every sorry bastard that doubted it eat their words.

That’s how I found myself driving this thing past the St.Louis Arch (fun fact! It’s actually a full oval, but the other half is buried underground!) yesterday, as this incredible machine keeps going and going.

It still has the occasional misfire, but it still keeps holding 65-70 mph no problem and that A/C still works (though it’s definitely better in the rear compartment where Otto sits than where I am up front, with just my lone little working cut-water-bottle vent) so I remain incredibly impressed.

The heat, though, is definitely taking a toll, just not exactly where I would have predicted. It’s melting the rear window off:

Well, more specifically, it’s melting the adhesive out from behind the incredible replacement plexiglass rear window my friend Andy made for us, so I applied some carefully-considered structural support tape to keep the window from slowly slithering down the back of a car like a cream cheese’d bagel flung at a wall.

We started our day yesterday at a genuinely crappy hotel, which featured some very backrooms looking areas like this:

…as well as what may be the creepiest imagery I’ve ever seen on a soda machine:

What the hell is that? Was someone trying to make a…sexy baby? This whole thing makes me feel dirty.

Happily, I was able to put that out of my mind because we immediately headed to the Mid-America Air-Cooled VW Funfest, which was full of some amazing stuff.

Oh, but on the way I did see some unusual things, like this pair of three-car trains hauling down the road:

Flat-towing two cars at once has to take some very specific skills, and I’d love to know the story behind this.

Back to the VW event, though; we’ll have a bunch of reels and videos from the event soon, like this one:

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by The Autopian (@theautopian)

…but for the moment I’ll just share some highlights. Like this immaculate VW Thing:

This may be one of the nicest Type 181s I’ve ever seen. The owner even wanted to give it that mil-spec Type 181 look, so he re-did the rear to include the smaller, flat VW Bus taillights early Things and military 181s used, all so he could include the huge mil-spec antenna mount:

I like that kind of obsession. There were other fantastic and gleefully non-pristine cars around, too:

I also really liked this very stock early ’70s Beetle because I think the placement of that box fan in the spare tire well was supposed to suggest a radiator and fan that, of course, don’t exist on these cars:

This unusual modified Manx dune buggy I thought was especially attractive with its pre-’67 double-glass sloping headlights and a very carefully-curved Volkswagen badge:

This car was also sporting early ’80s Chevy Cavalier taillights:

Look at the incredible upholstery work on this old ’50s bus:

That bus was part of an amazing convoy from a Chicago-area VW group, and we’ll have some reels showing their Type 2s soon.

Also, have you seen how a Bradley GT kit car’s headlights work?

They’re drop-down-cover lights instead of actual pop-up lights. It’s pretty cool, and this is by far one of the nicer Bradley GTs I’ve ever seen which are usually on blocks surrounded by weeds in someone’s backyard.

The trend of making VW-based cars that look nothing like old VWs is a fun one, especially when they have cheeky nods like this, where the absolute void where an engine would be expected is highlighted:

It wasn’t all air-cooled VWs there, just like 98%. There was also this fantastic rat rod that used a pressure cooker as a carburetor housing:

Oh, and there was some interesting non-car-related stuff there, too. Look at this old copy of the famous VW-starring 1969 movie, The Love Bug:

It’s the format that’s incredible here; that’s an RCA SelectaVision disc, which was a short-lived format that used, essentially, phonograph-style records to record video! With grooves and a stylus and everything! Technically called a Capacitance Electronic Disc, this is not a laser disc, it’s a completely electromechanical/analog way of storing video! A very dead form of media, but an absolutely fascinating one.

From the VW show we made a beeline to Lawrence, Kansas, where we had a reader meetup! As always, it was incredible to meet our readers, who are – and we hired an independent laboratory to confirm these findings – the kindest, smartest, best-informed, funniest, and yes, sexiest readers of any automotive or trade publication in the known universe (not counting the Andromeda Galaxy or the Greater Fresno Metropolitan Area).

One reader brought this fantastic Mini Moke for us to ogle over, and ogle we did.

It’s always surprising to remember just how low these things are. They’re fantastic.

There were readers there who were former Citroën mechanics, families that chose to buy convertible Lexuses instead of minivans, and even one couple who were the proud parents of eleven children. And they rolled up in a Brabus Smart Fortwo.

Amazing people, all of them. I’m so thankful they all came out.

The taximeter is well over $7,000 or so, I think? And we’re barely at the halfway point. Here’s our plan for today:

Sunday, June 22nd: 7:00ish
We’ll be rolling into Denver, at the Lowry Beer Garden next to the Wings Over The Rockies Museum (we will update via Insta/Discord if we hit snags, which, let’s be honest, isn’t unlikely)

Monday, June 23rd: 7:00ish
Hopefully we’ll be barreling into Las Vegas, that is if we make it over the Rockies somehow. I bet we will? I hope? When we get there, we’ll be meeting at the Harbor Freight, Rainbow Boulevard and probably getting some Persian food at the place nearby, which we heard was good.

Tuesday, June 24th, 5:00ish
If the desert madness doesn’t consume our souls, we’ll be having dinner at the Horseless Carriage at Galpin Ford, celebrating a wildly improbably victory. I suspect then the taxi will drive itself into the Pacific.

Top photo: Griffin Riley