As soon as the Ford Crown Victoria dominated the roads of New York Metropolis, now the final two roaming the streets of the Large Apple as taxis are set to be forcibly retired.
The Crown Victoria ended manufacturing in 2011, and with a seven-year registration restrict for all taxis set by town’s Taxi and Limousine Fee (TLC), it’s a small surprise the Crown Vic continues to be capable of choose up and set down passengers to at the present time.
In response to The New York Times, one of many remaining Crown Victorias is a 2011 mannequin owned and operated by Ravinder Sharma with round 885,000km on the odometer, and the opposite has 790,000km and belongs to Haroon Abdullah who purchased his automotive in 2013 after it had sat on a dealership lot for 2 years.
Each autos are nonetheless working as taxis as they got pandemic extensions. Just lately each homeowners have skipped their allotted taxi inspections, the place it’s greater than possible officers would have taken away the vehicles’ meters.
They haven’t been summonsed for administrative hearings, which, if misplaced, might end result of their taxi meters being shut off remotely. Not exhibiting as much as a listening to might result in a superb, and a suspension of their licences.
Jason Kersten, a spokesperson for the TLC, admitted to the newspaper these two Crown Victorias have been “the final of their type”, however added that “because it was with the Mannequin Ts, Checkers and Caprices earlier than them, their closing act of security have to be a well-earned retirement”.
Launched in 1991, the Crown Victoria changed the LTD Crown Victoria as Ford’s full-size body-on-frame sedan. Whereas its predecessor had boxy styling punctuated with sharp corners, the Crown Victoria had a rounder physique extra in step with the Taurus of the day.
Though the coupe and wagon physique types have been ditched, the Crown Victoria retained the Panther platform which dated again to 1979.
The second-generation Crown Victoria was launched in 1998, and included a brand new long-wheelbase variant focused on the taxi market, which measured 5563mm lengthy with a 3066mm wheelbase. This second-gen Crown Vic stayed in manufacturing, albeit with substantial under-the-body modifications, till 2011.
All Crown Victoria fashions had a 4.6-litre V8 driving the rear wheels by way of a four-speed computerized. The V8 made 142kW/353Nm initially of its life, and completed its days rated at 178kW/389Nm.
When this author moved to New York some 11 years in the past, the Crown Vic was nonetheless ubiquitous in each taxi cab yellow and police white, however their maintain on these two key markets was already on the wane.
In response to figures obtained by The New York Occasions, in 2011 — when manufacturing ceased — there have been 7400 Crown Victorias plying New York Metropolis’s streets as taxis, and the mannequin accounted for half of town’s cab fleet.
As we speak, nobody mannequin dominates the taxi fleet with Nissan NV200 and Ford Transit Join vans widespread, as are Toyota Sienna folks movers, and hybrid Toyota Camrys, Priuses, and Ford Escapes.
Official numbers present lively taxi driver numbers fell to round 10,000 in 2022, down from round 36,000 in 2013. That is due partly to the rise of ride-sharing apps, reminiscent of Uber and Lyft, however the sharpest fall got here through the pandemic.
All photos courtesy of Jason Lawrence via Flickr (Artistic Commons 2.0 licence)
