Two ! That’s the number of Ford Crown Victoria taxis still on the road in New York today. And retirement time is inevitably approaching for these two die-hard taxi drivers who have around 800,000 km on the clock!
Ford Crown Victoria, the iconic model of the 1990s-2000s
Indestructible, this model was the spearhead of the New York taxi fleet since the 1990s. It was impossible to escape it, they were everywhere.
The COVID crisis has made it possible to postpone the legal deadline for using the last copies, but the end is inevitable for this iconic model from the Big Apple.
The Ford Crown Victoria has been gradually replaced by a new generation of taxis, vehicles that are often hybrid (like the Ford Escape Hybrid) and increasingly 100% electric (like the Mustang Mach-E), which are significantly less polluting.
You should know that the New York taxi administration, the Taxi & Limousine Commission (TLC), wants to push VTC companies such as Uber and Lyft to go 100% electric by 2030. As part of a program called Green Ridesthe TLC would issue a driver’s license to VTC drivers who drive electric, and even if legal obstacles currently seem to compromise the smooth running of this project which began in mid-October, it is a safe bet that all-electric will become sooner or later the norm and will also apply to the city’s yellow taxis.
My fear is that there will no longer be one taxi but a multitude of different taxis, and that apart from their yellow color no model really stands out to “embody” its era, as has been so well done the Ford Crown Victoria, and other models before it.
I remember giving my son a small Ford Crown Victoria car when he was 2 years old. I chose it because it was THE yellow taxi in New York. 🙂
The yellow taxi, witness to the history of New York
It is amusing to observe that in New York more than elsewhere, each taxi model reflects its era.
Remember Travis Bickle (played by Robert De Niro) in Taxi Driver behind the wheel of his Checker Marathon!
At the time of the film (1976), it was the most common taxi model in New York. It was widely used in the 1960s-1980s, before gradually giving way to the Chevrolet Caprice and the Ford Crown Victoria, the two real stars of the 1990s-2000s.
After Hurricane Sandy, in October 2012, which drowned some of the last Ford Crown Victorias, new cars (Japanese in particular) appeared in the yellow taxi fleet, beginning the slow deconstruction of the “iconic model” which had prevailed until then.
When Ford ceased production of the Crown Victoria, there was talk that the city would replace some 13,000 yellow taxis with the Nissan NV200 model, but it appears that the project has fizzled out. In the meantime, since 2019, more than twenty models can operate as yellow taxis, and if I am delighted that the future of taxis belongs to green energies, I somewhat regret the days when New York’s yellow taxi York was embodied by one and the same model. I also wonder what model taxi will be offered by souvenir stores in the coming years… 😉
2023-11-24 08:00:00
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