The idea of taking a New York City cab with 375,000 miles on the clock for a cross-country road trip is a very Autopian idea. Those are Manhattan taxi miles, so in Normal Car terms that’s like 2 million on the odometer. However, the Nissan making the journey isn’t the most Autopian cab, is it? I found a few rare diesel-powered cab candidates that might have worked even better.
If you’ve ever waited at a taxi line anywhere in Europe, the pocketa-pocketa cacophony and pungent odor will tell you that diesel is the preferred fuel for liveries overseas. In America, cheap gasoline has always made oil burners a rather hard sell, especially when a lot of New York City fuel stations didn’t even have diesel pumps.
This didn’t stop people from trying. In 1969, Checker offered a Perkins diesel-powered version of their ubiquitous Marathon cab that you see in any old movie or television show filmed in the Big Apple.
I wouldn’t doubt that the diesel offered great fuel mileage, but a noisy 82 horsepower engine in place of a big gas six or V8 wasn’t something cab drivers liked, especially when gasoline was 35 cents a gallon. Checker dropped the option less than a year later.
After the gas crunches of the seventies, the idea of a diesel cab started to look more attractive. Diesel cab stalwart Mercedes-Benz was not about to sully their name here in America with service cars, and their prices were far too high anyway. Bit player and long-time diesel car maker Peugeot was willing to give it a shot starting in 1980. The French firm set their sights on the mean streets of New York, figuring that if they could make it there, they could make in anywhere and maybe become the next Checker (since that firm had no new product on the horizon and was about to exit the cab manufacturing game in 1982).
At $13,000, the Peugeot 505 taxis were almost $5,000 more than their American counterparts. Still, the Peugeot brochure offered this chart to show how the fuel savings and potential longevity of the French cars could make them a cheaper buy in the long run. A Peugeot taxi? A yellow and black French car? That just has Jason Torchinsky written all over it. Why couldn’t we have found one of those?
According to a New York Times article, in 1981 Peugeot brought in 850 diesel 505 taxis and quickly learned that changing the mindsets of cabbies and surviving on the streets of Escape From New York era Manhattan was no easy task. While most found the fuel mileage fantastic, the cost of parts and service negated much of those savings (if they could even find a place to fix them). They were indeed tough cars, but they were going up against some of the most durable American automobiles ever made like Chevy Impalas, Panther-chassis LTDs and even that still-in-production Checker Marathon. Those domestics were all cars you could walk into a random parts store anywhere in the tri state area and they’d have whatever you needed right now.
I didn’t realize that Peugeot offered the by-then-decade-old 504 station wagon as a cab option, too. Look, the Pan Am building!
The 505 might have been a nicely sized European taxi, but getting three Egg McMuffin-fed passengers and their luggage in back wasn’t going to happen. Also, try running the air conditioning in an automatic transmission diesel car with well under 100 horsepower; that was the final nail in the coffin. The Peugeot NYC experiment failed in short order.
Diesel cabs weren’t done, though. Checker was in their death throes by the early eighties but the managed to give the diesel one more shot. This time they reached out to General Motors, who provided them with the Oldsmobile diesel 350 that they were going to offer in their own Chevrolet cabs around the same time. According to a Chevy dealer quoted in that 1981 NYT article, “we have high hopes for (diesel in) 1982”.
Yeah, sure. Do I even need to tell you how things went with the GM diesel motor? Didn’t think so.
I can only think of one car right for that great and noble undertaking:
https://youtu.be/Q6NQcO9KTBY?si=jeHXFsOsnQWVhRac
Random trivia – A Peugeot 505 taxi is featured in the film Sexy Beast. It picks up Don and takes him to the airport, so we know for a fact that Ben Kingsley has ridden in a 505 taxi!
The only place in Europe that I have waited in a taxi line was in Venice. They do not have Mercedes or Peugeot cabs there. But the water taxis? Those guys can make those boats really go!
“If you’ve ever waited at a taxi line anywhere in Europe…”
For some reason I’ve been in Europe only in cooler weather, so for me the classic European aroma is cool air laden with diesel fumes.
Whoa, taxi WAGON? Awesome! Also, yeah I really wish they fixed up a Checker cab and drove it cross country. That would have been just fantastic
Through the grapevine, I heard that KSTP, the ABC affiliate in St. Paul/Minneapolis Minnesota used a fleet of Mercedes diesels for news cars back in the 70s. They all must have had block heaters in order to be able to start during the winter months.
The “improved” Olds 350 DX block (1981-1985) was in production when Checker decided to give the Olds Diesel a shot in 1981, but even with the improved block, at the least you still needed to add a water separator and replace the head bolts with ARP bolts to make it more reliable.
I was very young, but I rode in a few of these when they were still in service.
They were nicer than the domestic taxis of that time inside, and because they didn’t typically have a partition, they weren’t functionally any smaller than Fairmont/Volare/Valiant cabs, of which there were many in the years after the fuel crisis. Also, aside from being slow on the highway to and from the airport, they probably weren’t that bad to drive. They’re slow, and having driven a diesel manual 505 as an adult, it’s no fun on the highway. But none of the cars being used as taxis back then—Buick-V6-powered Impalas or straight-six Fairmonts—were what we’d call “powerful.”
All the 505s were all out of service by about 1989, and the last time I saw one was in 2001 at my former Peugeot garage in Westchester—it’d been off the road for a decade and was gradually stripped for parts. There were Peugeot dealers in the five boroughs, and you could get them serviced. The parts infrastructure, however, was nowhere near as good as the domestic options.
Coincidentally, while Mercedes wouldn’t sell cab-spec cars here, a tiny number of owner-drivers did buy and use W123 240Ds (and later W124 and even W210 diesels) as NYC cabs. The last ones vanished in the early 2000s.
In 1981, one of my college friend’s parents showed up for Homecoming in what they called their brand new Pewgot. That should’ve been an indication as to how things would generally go for Peugeot in the US.
I actually owned a 1981 504 diesel wagon 4 speed. It was an $800 beater I kept for 7 years or so. Yeah, it wasn’t fast. But it had the most comfortable seats I’ve ever experienced, the 4 speed shifted as smooth as butter, and the interior was positively cavernous. I hauled home a standard HON steel office desk without leaving the hatch open or removing the legs from the desk. And started first time every time even on 5 degree mornings. What ended the car for me was the front ball joints got so bad the car wouldn’t pass safety inspections here. However, I had a friend with a better looking 504 diesel wagon who managed to blow his engine – no idea how he accomplished that. A quirk of the 504 was that the VIN number plate was pop riveted to the dash pad. And the dash pad simply snapped into place on top of the steel dash. I gave him my car because he needed the wheels. Instead of going through the registration process, he just swapped dash pads. And being a masochist, he torched out the old ball joints and installed new ones and drove the car for another 8 or 9 years. And what actually ended up killing the car for good was deteriorating wire insulation. He would suffer random electrical fires – the battery was as big as Rhode Island so there was lots of amps to create havoc.
Jeezus, I miss that car.
“However, the Nissan making the journey isn’t the most Autopian cab, is it?”
Yeah, especially since the NV200 is:
Nissan Is Sadly Still A Nissan
or
Nothing Is So Sad As Nissan
or
Nobody Is Still Stoked About Nissan
The Checker Marathon is THE US taxi. Drive one of those from NY to LA.
Yeah, that’s what they should have done…it would have been awesome!
I think this might be the Boomer choice, but most have not see one of those cabs on the road in 4 decades. Probably the more likely newer thing if they wanted to make it relatively comfortably and of course before Cleetus or the Demo crowd got it would be a Panther Platform Ford. More often than not a former police version with a bad taxi wrap or painted with bright yellow house paint.
When I was in my teenage years, the local VW/Subaru/Peugeot dealer in Merced, CA made a deal with the local cab company and sold them a number of Peugeot 505s
There was even an article in the Merced Sun-Star.
They were rather good cars from a passenger standpoint.
For NYC cab use, I’m not sure horsepower is as important as torque. Around 1982-3, when the Oldsmobile 350 Diesel was proving a failure in Impala taxis, cabbies switched to various V-6 engines (229/262), which had neither torque nor horsepower in any appreciable amounts.
https://bringatrailer.com/listing/2003-lti-txii-3/
Would have been a fun one to see. Also curious to see if the old Fry Grease diesel kits can still work with current diesel fuel systems.
I see individual fuel lines rather than a common rail, so it might take a bit of used cooking oil?
They couldn’t be here because every 505 and 504 are working as cabs in Cairo.
There were just enough quirky, art school moms around who convinced their more Detroit oriented husbands to buy one. That’s how we got two of them.
Or college professors. The NYC-based film The Squid And The Whale is set in 1985 Brooklyn and the obnoxious professor/writer father in the movie owns a US spec 504.
I’ve had the pleasure to drive both the 504 and the 505 when they were still newish.
The 504 was the NA diesel wagon and the family hauler when I got my license. The chassis was great compared to what was around in my life at the time. Great handling and brakes – but no power to speak of. I think this is why I survived my early driving days. As a NYC cab, this would have been rear ended on day one and totaled.
The 505 was Dad’s daily for a while. Turbodiesel sedan, but still not much power. Slightly more refined than the 504. Ours died when the cruise control box caught fire and burned stuff. As a NYC cab, this might not have been rear ended on day one, but it certainly would have needed a new rear bumper a few times a year.
Dad’s experience with both the cars and the dealership were similar to what I think a NYC cab company would have expected, and therefor they would have stuck to American iron with all the known plusses and minuses.
Gasoline 505 or 504 would be the way to go. I was pretty young, but we had a ’71 carbureted 504 with four on the tree and I don’t remember my dad complaining about performance it too much. When we lived in the UK we owned an M-reg (’73?) 504Ti with stick that I remember being rather nice with a fair turn of speed for a seventies “large” car as the Brits called it then.
Traffic in NYC generally moves at the speed of smell. It would have been fine.
Having owned six 504/505, I never had any trouble keeping up with (and usually outpacing) traffic in them. Keep foot firmly to floor and never lift is the rule of thumb.
The Peugeot ride would have been ideal for NYC.
No doubt about that. 504s and 505s are still my favorite cars of all time.
If I could grab one car from my past and have it again, the 504 wagon we had would be top 3 on that list. It was neat looking, and very distinctive in the 80’s. It rode so nicely and was cavernous. Any speed above the double nickel limit back then took minutes to achieve, but that suits my vibe often enough now.
I had both a 504D sedan with a 4spd stick and a 504D wagon with the 3spd automatique. I had a 4spd 504 wagon too but it was never really road legal, bought it as a parts car. The wagon was definitely no ball of flame, the sedan was a lot nippier, being a lot lighter and a stick. Ultimately, you just drove both of them foot to the floor at all times. Both were most hampered on the highway by short gearing. Another gear in each would have made high speed cruising a lot quieter and more relaxing, but the wagon would cruise at 70 and the sedan at 80. 0-30 they were perfectly fine. My turbodiesel 505s were a LOT faster! I had a sedan and a wagon there too – both automatics, sadly.
I also had a 5spd 2.2l gas ’92 505 SW8. That was actually the only 5spd SW8 ever imported, and the very last 505 imported into the US in 1992. Special order by the folks I bought it from.
I really, really, really miss all of them. Just lovely cars, especially the 504D sedan. Some pics here:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/10764510@N05/albums/72157648226853955/
Perhaps my recollection of NYC traffic needs updating. It also seems my memory of the Puggit’s speed is out of line with others’. Perhaps that’s because the car I had immediately after that 504 was a 71 Old Cutlass ragtop with a V8.
NYC had 504 taxis before the 505s too.
https://i.natgeofe.com/n/cc786eef-8cef-4a80-a9e0-00279cdfdc6c/316.jpg
504 wagon would be the way to go. Four rear coil springs. Gotta be glacial pace though
I honestly didn’t know NYC had 504 wagon taxis until now, but I knew about the sedans.
Agreed. I think the Pugueots were popular in Africa for cargo hauling, which makes sense looking back on my experience. I now have a ’73 Land Rover, and the mantra is the same: go anywhere in the world but not quickly.