# Taxi cabs, police cars.....and hubcaps

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/taxi-cabs-police-cars-and-hubcaps/263258>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [September 5, 2004, 8:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/taxi-cabs-police-cars-and-hubcaps/263258 "2004-09-05T20:39:37Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![Mr.Slant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c57346/32.png) [@Mr.Slant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Slant)\
**Post date:** [September 7, 2004, 9:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/taxi-cabs-police-cars-and-hubcaps/263258/21 "2004-09-07T21:45:54Z")

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> [@Spartydog](#):
>
> About one third of the cabs in NYC were formerly police cars.
> 
> Think about that, the cops beat the crap out of them, sell them to the cab company that repaints and refits them (hacks them) then you pay big money to ride around in them. Not only that but the driver is some crazy foreigner that learned to drive someplace that had no rules of the road.
> 
> So at least a third of the cabs are put into service with no hubcaps and the thieves and the potholes take a bunch of them. The rest, the cabbie that rented the car sold the remaining hubcaps to a parts place or traded them for gasoline.
> 
> Viola! No hubcaps!

Sparty,

I thought the NYC taxi commision or some such had Nazi regulations regarding how many miles a taxi could have and its maximum age? Wouldn’t that prevent a used squad being used in NYC proper? Most police departments don’t dump their vehicles until what… 60,000 miles?  
Maybe I’m out of my mind here, or maybe standards have slipped. I thought you basically had to put new cars into NYC taxi service nowadays.

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**Author:** ![R.P.McMurphy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/7993a0/32.png) [@R.P.McMurphy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/R.P.McMurphy)\
**Post date:** [September 8, 2004, 1:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/taxi-cabs-police-cars-and-hubcaps/263258/22 "2004-09-08T01:46:14Z")

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> [@Jonathan Woodall](#):
>
> Sparty,
> 
> I thought the NYC taxi commision or some such had Nazi regulations regarding how many miles a taxi could have and its maximum age? Wouldn’t that prevent a used squad being used in NYC proper? Most police departments don’t dump their vehicles until what… 60,000 miles?  
> Maybe I’m out of my mind here, or maybe standards have slipped. I thought you basically had to put new cars into NYC taxi service nowadays.

I don’t know exactly what the NYC restriction is but a cab may have 500,000+ miles on it before it completly falls to pieces. A few years ago there still an old Checker in service. Chicago has/had a restriction that the cab couldn’t be more than 5 years old. Those cabs got shipped to Pittsburgh (no fooling). 60.000 miles is nothing for a taxi.

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**Author:** ![SmackFu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/53a042/32.png) [@SmackFu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SmackFu)\
**Post date:** [September 8, 2004, 2:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/taxi-cabs-police-cars-and-hubcaps/263258/23 "2004-09-08T02:15:54Z")

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It also depends on whether the cabbie owns the vehicle. A cab driven for one shift a day is going to last longer than one driven 24 hours.

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