The 375,000 Mile Taxi That Everyone Thought Was Dead Drove All The Way From NYC To LA, Bitches

I realize it’s been about a week since the last 375,000 mile ex-NYC taxi cross-country adventure update, and that’s on me. I apologize. I’ll just come out and tell you that the taxi made it, incredibly, climbing those Rockies like a champ, barreling down them like some other champ, and I, an entirely different manner of champ, managed to curtail my deep and powerful urges to drive it right smack into one of those runaway truck ramps. I was really tempted. One day, Jayjay. One day.

Again, I did not drive at full breakneck speed onto one of those huge gravel ramps used to slow down trucks, and that is part of why this story is such a tale of triumph, but only a tiny, infinitesimal part. The real reason is this incredible taxi itself, which somehow refused to quit, and, I suppose, all of the work put into this miserable little basket case of a cab by Stephen Walter Gossin, David Tracy, Andy King, and yes, even me.

Remember, this was our assessment of the taxi before David and I really got down to work on it:

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by The Autopian (@theautopian)

Not great! And yet, after an awful lot of work, some of genuine quality, but an awful lot of those repairs – mostly the ones I did – should give you some intense feelings of slipshodenfreude – after all that this taxi has really achieved, if not the impossible, then definitely the extremely improbable, and made its way, under its own power, all the way across this vast and great land of ours.

Oh but before we left Denver, we did remember to finally check the cabin air filter. Matt pulled it out to change it, and we compared the old and new ones:

Holy crap. I’ve been breathing air through that for how many days? And my son? Oy. I should be immune to pretty much everything now, right? Right? Someone help me justify not being a horrible parent here.

When we left off last time in Denver, and everyone at the meetup was pretty apprehensive about the cab’s ability to make it over the Rocky Mountains, which are, to be fair, pretty steep. They are mountains, after all, and rocky ones a that, and that presents two significant challenges, which we’ll call up and down. Getting up the mountains – especially at the high altitudes that will deprive the engine of power due to the lessened air density – will really test this little taxi’s engine. It’s a big climb!

Matt, in the nice new Honda Passport chase car, gave me a nice vote of confidence by going out and buying a trailer tire that he intended to mount on the front of the Passport in case he had to push me up the mountain, an act that I suspect he was simultaneously completely unsure of how to perform and also desperately excited to try to perform it [Ed note: I could have made it work! – MH]. Happily, he never got the chance, and just blew like $50 on a trailer tire that I guess we can make into a planter, or something.

The NV200 taxi just dug in and climbed those mountain roads. The revs went up to the highest levels of the trip – about 4,000 RPM (at 65-70 mph the taxi usually rev’d at about 2,000 to 2,500) – and, sure, I did feel the power loss and we weren’t exactly tearing ass up that mountain, but we were getting the torn ass of this taxi up it, steadily and surely.

Honestly, it did great; it was cool enough out that I used the hood switch to turn off the A/C compressor clutch, making sure the engine had all the motive power it could muster, and there were no overheating issues or anything of the sort. Even that ominous Xtronic CVT kept on variably adjusting those not-gear ratios just fine. Once again, this crumpled yellow box defied everyone’s expectations and fears and just kept on going.

Then, of course, came the way down, the inevitable aftermath of going up, and, yeah, it got a little nervy as gravity dragged that taxi down the mountain at a sometimes alarming clip, and, then, of course, there was my own perpetual fight with my inner demons to not try out one of those runaway truck ramps, which, again, I did not, at least not yet, but the brakes worked as intended, and I also tried putting that CVT into low range but that did cause the revs to spike pretty significantly, which alarmed me more than the speed, so I soon went back to D.

The point is it made it. And, really, without any major drama, which in itself is ironically dramatic.

Then came the desert crossing through Utah into Nevada, which was stark and beautiful, despite all of the discarded crates along the side of the road for ACME jet-powered roller skates and batwing outfits and various explosives. The desert was overall a breeze, the janky A/C kept conditioning that air, and at this point I was confident enough in the taxi that I could really enjoy the sights.

Like the bustling metropolis of Green River, Utah, optimal environment for a New York City taxi:

Or the majestic road elephants!

Seriously, we passed several trucks carrying these (wicker?) elephants, all heading West. Where were they headed? Vegas? The Pacific?

I’m not really sure, but I think all told we saw like four trucks with elephants, some with lone big ones, some with three smaller ones. Based on the citrus-colored laurels and decoration, I wonder if these are related to Vishnu? Whatever they’re doing, I hope they enjoy their new lives, wherever that may be.

In other elephantine news, right above is a picture that I think defines the two boldest and most influential vehicles on the road today. Between that Cybertruck and that old taxi exists the entire spectrum of the carscape of 2025, somehow. Maybe that’s the residual road madness talking, but there’s something there. Also, I’d like to note that I passed that Cybertruck.

I mean, sure, eventually they passed me in turn, but for a moment there, that yellow taxi and I were as gods.

I did pass over driving to Matt for a one-and-a-half glorious hours, where I played a bit of Centipede and had a nap. The taxi beeped at Matt the whole time he was in it (the parking brake wasn’t quite down all the way) and I think Matt was happy to both have tried driving the taxi, and to be done with it.

We eventually emerged from the desert into the illuminated and wildly chromatic ordered chaos of Las Vegas, that bastion of capitalism on fat rails of cocaine, and while the lights were exciting, I was pretty exhausted.

Viva Las Vegas, right? Right?

Also, I find Vegas to be a sort of exhausting city even when I haven’t been behind the wheel of a ramshackle taxi for 12 hours nonstop, so in some ways this last haul into Vegas was some of the more challenging sections of driving that I encountered. There’s just this general sense of a whole entire city designed to try to extract as much money from you as possible, and you can sort of feel that, everywhere.

My Vegas tolerance limit is about 24 to 36 hours; once, years ago, I had a startup webcasting company and we’d go to Vegas for tradeshows, and have a booth we’d have to run while there. After about a week the Desert Madness and Vegas Madness would conspire to erode your rational mind, so much so that by the end of the week, I got into one of the biggest, longest, most vitriolic and intense argument-fights I’d ever been in with my longtime friend and colleague in the business, and guess what it was about?

Go on, guess. Give it a shot.

Whatever you guessed, I can promise you, what we were fighting about – near to the point of coming to blows – was vastly stupider. We were fighting over whether salt was a condiment or a spice. I wish I was kidding. And for the record, I said spice, and I stand by that, but probably not to the point of Vegas-induced rage. I’m still embarrassed about that.

Anyway, in much happier news, we had some dedicated readers show up when we hit Vegas!

From there, we finally went to our hotel to collapse, a hotel in a casino, as they all seem to be, which meant a great opportunity to examine Casino Carpeting:

I bet multiple people in the comments will be able to tell where we stayed based on this carpet-simian.

As a treat for Otto, who had been an absolute champion this entire grueling trip, we took a pit stop to Omega Mart, art collective Meow Wolf’s amazing installation in Vegas.

It’s a sort of twisted grocery store, but with lots, lots more, and if you’re around the area, I can’t recommend it enough.

One last leg of driving. Not a long leg, but the knowledge that this was the last leg made it feel longer. But soon, traffic density started to increase, and you could feel the salty glamour of Los Angeles creeping up on you. And then, there it was:

Our final destination, the Galpin Mothership. A long-desired tuna melt awaited, along with another batch of fantastic Autopian readers ready to welcome the victorious taxi after its incredible journey.

I’d like to point out that this is one of the only reader-meetup photos Otto agreed to be in, as you can see him looking sternly over the taxi’s roof there.

I’m still sort of in awe that this actually worked. That this miserable, about-to-park-in-death’s-driveway taxi somehow made it all the way from North Carolina to New York to Los Angeles, and did it with so little trouble. It’s astounding and inspiring. You can’t ever really be down for the count when there’s so many people around you ready to lift you up and give you a chance. And I think that’s exactly what we did with this taxi.

This cab was a worker, all its life. No glory, no glitz, just getting people – probably often cranky, tired people – to where they needed to go, taking abuse from potholes and traffic and weather and rough people and trash and time and everything that the elements and world could throw at it. Now, I think it’s a hero.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by The Autopian (@theautopian)

This taxi deserves our respect. Look at this odometer.

That’s 378,790 miles. We put about 3,000 miles on this thing since we dragged it out of that Copart lot. The total mileage is enough miles to go to the moon and get about 2/3 of the way back home. Most of those miles were hard, New York City miles, and that last chunk was an unexpected dream of open-road freedom.

I hope wherever this taxi ends up next is somewhere where they’ll respect its unassuming determination and strength, and I hope someone will find a fun next life for this saffron-colored little lump, a lump I’ve grudgingly grown very fond of.

Thanks for the ride, taxi.

All the good photos: Griffin Riley, all the potato photos Jason Torchinsky