A few weeks ago we took a look as some NYC Taxis from the late 1970s into the early 1980s, then the saw the Louisville taxi Bill Murray drove in Stripes. This week we look at some from elsewhere in North America. We start in Montreal, Quebec where they just strapped a taxi light on a four door sedan, most likely a GM B body of some nature. Not exactly the most interesting, but very European inspired.
Washington, D.C. until very recently had a rainbow of different cab paint schemes applied to everything from ex-police cars to luxury sedans. The Diamond Cab Company had this striking three color livery seen on this Chrysler Fifth Avenue, perhaps the least expected M body taxi.
Just up I-95 in Baltimore, Maryland, the Yellow Cab Company (top) used this black and orange livery. It was basically identical, save for the phone number, to the Yellow Cab Company in D.C. (bottom).
A more expected M body and a Yellow Cab that is actually Yellow could be found in Chicago, Illinois.
In Long Beach, California they also had yellow Yellow Cabs..
Staying in the southland, Los Angeles has the oddly named United Independent Taxi. Seems like a contradiction. 
In L.A. ceci n’est pas une Checker, but at least it shares some parts with one.
Up the coast in San Fransisco they were trying to pass off a Volare as a DeSoto.
In Portland, Maine they stuck to the ABCs.
And in Toronto, Ontario we can be sure Beck Taxi was not named after the singer since it is way older than he is.
Our son was in The Borough of Queens in New York City in the community of Flushing onb July Fifteenth. Look at what he spotted!
Sorry! it was captured as an HEUC file. here it is in JPEG. Tom
My work in the ’90s required flying weekly from one of the three DC area airports, National in DC, BWI in Baltimore, or Dulles in Virginia. I don’t recall ever seeing a Fifth Avenue taxi in D.C., but you’re right about any old car being used as a taxi there, including luxury models. I rode in a ’83 or ’84 Buick Electra Park Avenue in 1996 or thereabouts, pillowy velour seats still in good shape. Lots of Olds 98s too and of course Lincoln Town Cars which were commonplace. Both Maryland and DC cabbies seemed to prefer the Olds 88 over the Impala from the early to mid 80s, saying the transmission was stronger. Neighboring Virginia was a different story completely though – an organization called Washington Flyer seemed to have a monopoly on taxi service at Dulles and virtually all their cars were whale-era silver Caprices, nice ones with the upgraded interior. In Maryland several companies provided taxi service using several big sedans and occasionally vans/minivans, but I think they had a legal age limit for cars that DC didn’t.
Maybe the Toronto taxi was named after Jeff Beck…
In mid-80s Montreal it seemed like a lot of taxis were (diesel?) VW Jetta MkIIs.
I wonder how many of those luxury-car DC taxis were bought as livery cars and repainted as regular cabs when they got too dingy for that.
Toronto was infamous for its’ yellow police cars that looked like taxis.
In the olden days the cars of the DeSoto Cab Co. in San Francisco were always Chrysler products like that one is though, and maybe even DeSotos back when they were in existence.
I drove for Desoto cab in San Francisco from 1998-2001. The fleet was made up of a variety of Chrysler products. During my time there I drove Dodge Dynastys, Chrysler LHS, Dodge Intrepids, Plymouth Acclaims a 300M and a few PT Cruisers. DeSoto had a long term working relation with Chrysler as a laboratory to test components for durability and did indeed use DeSotos when they were still manufactured. Occasionally there might be test run using something from another manufacturer. We had 4 or 5 Toyota Camrys in the fleet for a few years around 1999.
Have always loved green taxis! Here’s my old 1957 Checker Cab Model A8. Photograph. © 2002 Joe Fay