The verdict is in after months of testing on the pothole-scarred streets of the Big Apple: The mini-van is the taxi of the future.
New York has settled on the mini-van after pilot-testing everything from sedans to off-road vehicles, and just gave Chevrolet the nod to sell taxi-fleet owners the Venture mini-van.
“There may still be cars. But if I had to say where the scale has tilted, it’s toward mini-vans,” says Diane McGrath-McKechnie, chairwoman of New York’s Taxi and Limousine Commission.
And if they can make it here, it seems, mini-van taxis can make it anywhere.
The bland symbols of suburbia are making inroads in Chicago, where a law requires that at least 25 percent of its taxis be converted to mini-vans. In Las Vegas, yellow mini-van taxis are becoming familiar sights along the Strip.
Automakers are divided over what to make of this shift in urban transport. Some see a tempting growth market; others worry whether the new-look taxis will dent the image of the popular mini-van with ordinary car buyers.
General Motors Corp. is aggressively courting taxi business, and just received a critical approval from New York City to introduce a customized taxi version of the Chevy Venture mini-van.
Rules in New York and Chicago requiring more-rapid turnover of taxis have made the market much more attractive, company officials say. “They can’t just keep refurbishing them and driving them for 300,000 miles any longer,” says Tom Pfingst, Chevrolet’s director of commercial sales.
But Chrysler Corp., the king of the mini-van, isn’t marketing them as taxis to big Northern cities, partly for fear that urban abuse will tarnish its image. Ralph Sarotte, general product manager for mini-vans, explains that New York taxis get a 24-hour-a-day pounding, so Chrysler prefers to sell to smaller cities such as Las Vegas and Houston. There, he says, taxis “are in great shape, they maintain them. If you go into some other cities and they are rattletraps, that’s not a good thing. We have to watch that.”
For now, Ford Motor Co. is sticking with its Crown Victoria sedan, which it sells as a taxi to dozens of cities. Isuzu Motors Ltd. has received approval to sell its Oasis mini-vans–a version of the Honda Odyssey–to New York cab companies. But most Japanese automakers are watching from the sidelines.
Though some of its dealers put dozens of new Odyssey mini-vans on New York streets as part of the city’s pilot program, Honda Motor Co. says it isn’t interested in promoting the Odyssey as a taxi. “Our experience has been positive, but it’s not likely to be something we will get into in a big way,” says Honda spokesman Andy Boyd.
Taxis are a juicy market for someone in the auto business. Checker Motors Corp., Kalamazoo, Mich., stopped making its boxy taxis in 1982, to the dismay of aficionados who regard the Checker as the greatest taxi. Otherwise, the workhorses of the industry have been the big, boatlike rear-wheel-drive Chevrolet Caprice and Ford Crown Victoria. But the Caprice hasn’t been made since 1996, and some municipal officials and fleet operators say the Crown Victoria costs more to run than mini-vans, without their roominess and utility.
“You can fit more people in a van, more luggage in a van, and it means more money for the cab driver,” says Caroline Orzac Schoenberger, who as Chicago’s commissioner of consumer services is responsible for managing the city’s 5,700 taxis. She also says cars don’t come close to meeting the needs of the physically disabled the way mini-vans can.
To make its mini-vans comply with big-city taxi requirements, GM has teamed up with Indiana-based Starcraft Corp., which specializes in custom van conversions. GM’s taxi version has hinged doors rather than sliders, which New York and Chicago officials deem hazardous for discharging passengers in traffic. It has separate controls for air conditioning and heating, and six inches of leg room between passengers and the plexiglass shield New York requires for driver safety.
Such modifications are one reason Chrysler is steering clear of the New York taxi market. “Once you start retrofitting, you don’t know how the vehicle is going to end up,” says Sarotte. “If they don’t want the mini-van the way it is, we don’t want to give it to them.”
New York’s fleet of 12,000 taxis is the nation’s largest. Their bumper-car demeanor and decrepitude may be symbolic of the city’s surly grit–but they are hardly in keeping with Mayor Rudolph Guiliani’s campaign to lift the local “quality of life.” So New York has mandated that most taxis had to be retired after three years. Then came the question of what to replace them with.
The Caprice was gone. Ordinary sedans are too small. The trucklike off-roaders that are taking the rest of America by storm are impractical for carting passengers around the urban jungle. So after pilot-testing the options, New York taxi officials decided on the mini-van, making the transition official.
“What New York says or does, the rest of the world will follow,” says Allen Kaplan, chief executive of Team Systems Inc., which runs one of New York’s largest fleets from a taxi yard in Long Island City.
New York cabbies who have been driving mini-vans report getting much better tips. “People are crazy about them. I hear about it all day,” says Jacques Belizaire, a cabbie who says his mini-van taxi gets better gas mileage than the big cars he used to drive. As for passengers, there is no avoiding some resistance from purists, especially in Manhattan. After all, urban sophisticates have long scorned mini-vans as boringly suburban.
“When people come to New York, they want to appreciate New York,” says Jan Ramirez, the deputy director of collections and programs at the Museum of the City of New York. She argues that the arrival of the mini-van taxi represents the loss of one more element that makes New York City unique. “It’s like bringing Scarsdale into Manhattan,” she says.
The city museum’s most popular exhibit is an old Checker cab acquired in 1991, Ramirez says. Back then there were only 12 Checkers operating on New York streets (two remain today). Many New Yorkers still have a strong emotional attachment to taxicabs, Checker or not. Their threatened extinction “brings out this profound feeling in New York about what else has been lost,” Ramirez says.
Still, most New Yorkers are taking the transition in stride–even Judd Hirsch, the star of the 1980s sitcom “Taxi.”
“Nostalgia has never played a part in my longing for the perfect taxi,” Hirsch says. “If New York cabs had the luggage space of a van, the roominess of the Checker and the safety and courteousness of the London cab, we would be in taxi heaven.” He thinks the show “Taxi” could have been made with mini-vans instead of Checker cabs. “We just would have looked sillier,” he says.
CHEVY VENTURE TAXICAB
– Wheelbase: 112 inches
– Length: 186.9 inches
– Engine: 3.4-liter, 180-h.p. V-6 with auxiliary engine oil cooler
– Transmission: 4-speed auto- matic with heavy-duty cooler
– Fuel economy: 18 m.p.g. city/ 25 highway
– Brakes: Power heavy-duty front disc/rear drum with anti-lock
– Tires: P205/70R 15 blackwall steel-belted radials
– Steering: Power rack and pinion with auxiliary cooler
– Suspension: Taxi strut and coil spring
– Electical: Heavy-duty 140 amp alternator
– Heating/air: Front and rear, con- trol for driver, passenger
– Options: Extended wheelbase, six passenger-seating, rear-win- dow defroster, power windows, oversized tires.
