When I first drove by this CV for sale, I only caught the “CabCo./Fleet….$7500” part, and assumed that it was just one former taxi for sale. Seemed mighty expensive to me, for an old tired taxi. So I parked and had a closer look.
Aha; it’s for “All Four”. Hmm, still seems a bit much for old, tired taxis.
These already had a prior life as police cars too. I could only read the odometer from one of them; it was 422,xxx miles. I’m making an assumption, but if they all have about that on them, that’s a total of almost 1.7 million miles.
The upholstery on these fleet CVs appears to be tough stuff.
The sun got in my shot, but here’s the rest of them, what was formerly the fleet of Jerry’s Cab Co. I don’t know if they’ve gone out of business or bought new(er) cars, but here’s the chance to get into the cab business in Eugene for a low price. Or not. Overpriced, or fairly priced?
Rational Brain: Personally I’d offer him the per ton scrap price for the lot. Then if all you get out of them is parts you’d still likely come out ahead. (Which online sources say $170 to $180 per ton…) So roughly less than $2000.
Smartass: Does he have the service records?
“Paul’s Curbside Pickup” – The new taxi co. in town!
The possibilities are endless…..
$1875 each for four rust-free, presentable CVs doesn’t sound bad to me. Someone with four kids in high school and college needs a package deal like this. Plus, Dad will never hear complaining about how one of the other kids got a nicer car. 🙂
Perfect arrangement, unless Dad has to keep them running. 🙂
Wonder if Uber drove them to get out of the business?
Eugene drove Uber out. Not here any longer. Lots of younger folks weren’t happy about that, but the taxi owners pushed the city pretty hard.
Uber as “ride sharing” is surely one of the great misnomers of all time
The Taxi Council here in QLD has been throwing money into lobbying and scare campaigns against Uber. And now some taxi drivers (only a few, mind you) have been arrested for assaulting Uber drivers. Uber is a disruptive business, yes, but the taxi companies here were providing an inferior service for a higher price and the people have responded with their feet and their wallets. I use Uber quite a bit.
I might say a fair price. I have been in Crown Vic taxi’s with over 600K on the clock. Might still be some life left in a couple of them.
If someone in Hollywood is planning to produce a third Blue Brothers movie, they need to snap up these to stock the police car crash fleet.
I hope that never happens. Who can replace Belushi. Nobody!
They tried with John Goodman
I wonder if that 422k mile car was the ’02 or the ’08. Then again, they all might be similar, depending on a number of factors. And in any case the 2V 4.6 is one of the most bulletproof engines Ford has ever turned out; they’ll just keep going.
$1875 each sounds a bit steep given the mileage, but I guess it depends on how meticulously they’ve been maintained. And I’d be suspect of the transmission on the ’02; the 4R70W is a good box but can be the weak link in aero Panthers. The other three should have the stronger upgraded 4R75W.
The feature car is the ’06 according to the windshield.
if the buyer is planning to keep using them as taxis and if they still have the meters and required lights and placards $1875 isn’t bad. That stuff runs about $600 per car here in Georgia. I work for an ambulance service but for whatever reason the owner of the service decided to buy a taxi service also. I know we have at least 2 CV’s with over 600k and a town car with 475k. I want to take the highest mileage one and try to get a million miles on it.
Well it does also say B.O. So there’s some negotiating room there.
Hmm, now I’m not so sure of the deal I got recently. I picked up a 09 Crown Vic with just under 100K miles on it for $3780….all in, no taxes paid (as the purchase was from a charity). Originally a central Florida Sheriff’s Dept. car, it’s in reasonably good shape (the front seats are a bit “grubby”) though the paint needs “touching up” in a few spots.
That sounds like a fine deal to me. An ’09 with under 100k miles? 3780 with no taxes? I’d happily pay that if I was looking for one. Compared to these cars, yours is newer and 1/4 the mileage…
As I said in my comment below pricing on used cars is heavily dependent on location. Based on my area that is about the going rate for an ex WSP car that is a former unmarked car in blue or red with the SAP. SAP is the street appearance package which means chrome grille, chrome on the tail lights and full wheel covers. As a WSP car that would mean cloth back seat, active rear doors and never had a cage. It would also mean that it had good tires as the state replaces at 6/32.
On the other hand there sometimes one runs through pretty cheap like this one. http://www.publicsurplus.com/sms/all,wa/auction/view?auc=1494340 it is green (even though it looks more grey in the pictures) so that accounts for some of the low price add ~$500 for silver or true (metallic) grey, ~$1000 for blue or red. It also went cheap because it was a less than 3 day auction and ended on a Sat night.
When the OHC 4.6 motors replaced the push rod 302’s, there was all this hand ringing about them “not being as durable” and the “good old 5.0.”
Sounds familiar?
Seems to be hit and miss with Ford. The 5.4 was a POS.
I’ve definitely heard less than flattering things about the 5.4. But the 4.6 in all versions is quite solid. The 16V SOHC motors are bulletproof, and the all-aluminum 32V DOHC variants are just as reliable (if far less common)*
*Just as reliable in RWD applications, at least. Not really sure what the record was like when adapted for FWD in the ninth-gen Continental.
The 302 was never as good as the SBC or the later 4.6, and it really didn’t like LPG at all.
It all depends. #1 used car pricing is very localized. #2 the way I read the sign it sounds like it includes the business.
As far as the value of the cars w/o taxi meter and licensee they are worth $1000 +/- depending on their exact condition, and with the remains of a bright livery based on the prices in my area. At ~400k they are either due for a new transmission or they have had a new transmission as the expected life is 350k-400k. What about the tires, they have become pretty expensive so that does factor into the price.
However the price that retired police cars go for does seem to be lower through pubic surplus in OR than in WA. Around here an ex-state patrol car is ~$1500 for an all white with 150K to as much as $4000 for a blue with 100k. Being WSP they have the cloth rear seat, never had a cage in them and the rear doors are active from the inside. Now at the county sales they tend to go for a little cheaper though many of those have the hard plastic perp seat, have had cages in them and don’t have active rear doors. However there are a bunch of them at one time instead of just a couple at a time.
Now if it is an active business as I read the sign then $7500 seems like a pretty good deal if it includes the licenses (depending on what they run in the area), meters, phone number, good will and any spare parts like extra tires and wheels.
In that case the cars are worth $5000 assuming are all in good running order and the $2500 is cheap to walk into an ongoing business with the proper licenses, and the good will of having the phone number known and in circulation. The other question is any standing contracts that they have. For example in our area there are some school districts that use taxis for some very special student transportation cases. Other gov’t agencies also have contracts for transporting people who are on public assistance to their appointments with the agency or other special needs and they also distribute vouchers to those people for other uses.
It’s just the cars, as per the ad. As is pretty apparent, the meters and all are all stripped out, right? And getting a taxi permit in Eugene is super easy; just an annual fee. No limit to them, and one can’t re-sell them.
The sign does say “Cab Co” which certainly could mean the business is included. It doesn’t say cars to start your cab company. I know I wouldn’t be trying to sell them with wording like that if I owned a cab company in a market like Eugene because I wouldn’t want to encourage competition.
Note I did say IF it included the business then the price is reasonable, but if it is just the cars then the price is way high based on the prices in my area and the fact that the retired CVs seem to go for less in OR based on the prices I’ve seen for ex-OSP cars on public surplus. Here is the most recent one to close. http://www.publicsurplus.com/sms/all,or/auction/view?auc=1484131 granted it is not a color so that holds its price down and you have to add 10% auction fee for public surplus. Also note the announcements. That seems to be one of the reasons for the disparity in pricing between WSP and OSP pricing, the OSP cars always seem to have announcements and tend to have more miles.
The “Bubble King” on the East Coast sells them for $1600-$1800 with new paint in your choice of colors. You Buy, they paint, ready the next day. Interesting commercials on You Tube.
Wow that is a really good price for one all painted and ready to go.
Speaking as someone who has first hand knowledge of retired taxis, $7500 is a complete farce for these cars. At 400,000+ miles the cars are simply worn out. The metal gets fatigued, and you can’t bolt parts to a fatigued piece of metal and expect them to last long. As a taxi operator, I might be willing to pay $500 for each one for parts, BUT……
-Parts cars are fine if you have a place to park them. That said, say you want to pull a fender off your parts car; that means you have to pay a guy to do it. There is no point swapping over anything mechanical, since all said parts are old, and you’ll be setting yourself for labour and downtime.
-The CV is pretty much done for taxi use. It is too large, heavy, and even at today’s lower fuel prices, thirsty. It simple costs a lot less to use a Prius when you are on the road 24/7. Successful taxi operators look for a car with a good $/km/payload ratio, which may mean changing brands from time to time.
These things are only due for the scrap heap, or for a teenager to sink is paycheque into.
I’ve never lived anywhere that they last that long, but I’m open to the idea that there is such a place. NYC CV taxis are run three shifts a day and usually get regular oil changes, so the lack of cold starts makes the engines reliable. The rest of the car is toast with considerably less than 300,000 miles on account of the terrible pavement, rotating rent a drivers with no mechanical sympathy, and other abuses. I took a cab to work everyday for two years and rarely rode in one with more than 200,000 miles. Anything over 100,000 was more of a rolling assemblage of nasty parts than a car.
I worked for a livery company a few years ago here in San Diego. Their Town Cars were run hard for 200,000 miles and then used in a reduced capacity until about 280,000 miles. By then they were far from luxury transportation. Whatever was left was sold to Mexico. The company did swap engines and transmissions from time to time, but the engine failures were put down to a mechanic who left before I got there. He was too busy planning his transition to actually do any regular maintenance, is what I was told.
How long ago was that? The big companies that lease out cabs are required to turn them over every 3 or 4 years, but owner operated cars stay on the road much longer. And even after that, they end up as green cabs/livery cars trolling the outer boroughs for years and years. It’s not uncommon to see 300k+ on yellow cabs these days, although by that point the suspension is usually well and fully decimated and you can tell the back seat has been puked and/or shit on at least a couple of times!
Check out these ridiculous prices for used cabs: http://nycitycab.com/business/cabsforsalelist.aspx
I left in 2002 and never looked back. This was pre-totalitarian mayors, so cab companies ran cars from new to scrap iron. There were still first generation Honda Odyssey cabs in service that were anywhere from five to eight years old. They had some serious miles. When I moved to Manhattan in 1993, there were still two Checker cabs in full yellow cab service, even though they’d gone out of production a dozen years earlier.
If you’re seeing 300K mile yellow cabs now, is it because they’re 3,100 lb Toyotas instead of 4,200 lb Fords?
It could be that cars are just getting better in general. I’ve only been a regular cab rider for the last 5 years, so competition from Uber and the rapidly falling value of yellow cab medallions could be keeping cars on the streets longer too.
The Chevys I drove at Yellow Cab in SD were 5-6 years old. They averaged 60k per year there, so these cars had 300-350+k miles on them. Needless to say, they were well broken in.
I don`t know about an out of service taxicab, but it would be cool to own a black Crown Vic in good condition. Unmarked police car, nobodys gonna mess with you!
I’ve owned several old police cars as daily drivers. It’s not all milk and honey.
Obviously CV cabs are less common now than even just a few years ago, but there are still plenty on the roads in California. I rode in one in Irvine about 15 years ago that had 375K and it rode and looked excellent. The driver was very proud of his car. So I’m not sure that these really “wear out” … I’d think a properly rebuilt trans or motor would last as long as a new one, and other wear like door hinges, trim etc could be very dependent on care and usage. In fact, I’m amazed at how many CV patrol cars are still on the roads here … the transition to Explorers has been going on for several years now with the CHP as well as our local city PD and county sheriffs, but it still seems more than 50% CV in the region.
Here’s two sites I frequent…
http://www.publicsurplus.com/
and
https://www.govdeals.com/
Public Surplus has a bit less competition. If you get real bored, check the prices for old Tauruses, Crown Vics, and Aerostars here in Georgia. Your mouth will be gulping up gravel with how low vehicles are sold out here.