Have you ever glanced in your rearview mirror and seen a police car, only to realize later on it’s only a taxi? I have a mini-conspiracy theory on this one: taxis are intentionally designed to look like police cars so people get out of their way.
I think both cops and taxi drivers like to buy large, confortable (but not luxurious) cars they can cruise around in for 10 hours a day - which means they tend to buy similar models.
Also consider economies of scale. Manufacturers build twice as many cars of the same model, making minor modifications at the end to suit the customer. Crown Vics are sold exclusively through Ford’s Fleet sales.
Actually it’s quite common for cab companies to buy used police vehicles. To be honest not many other people would want a used cop car (they get put through hell, get vomited in, pissed in et cetera.)
Sedans are the perfect sized vehicle for every day use. The average populace (for the most part) stopped buying sedans in favor of compact cars and SUVs, leaving the only market for these cars as taxis and police cars. Since both of these are “work” vehicles, they don’t need to have any sort of personal flair. Point in fact, they are pretty much all the same exact car, the Ford Crown Victoria.
Even though this car is perfectly sized for pretty much all uses by your average family, and even though taxi drivers do their very best to drive them into the ground it will still continue to function solidly for decades, it sold so little to your average buyer that Ford has actually ceased selling it as anything other than a taxi or police car. IMHO, this state of affairs fairly well highlights the inanity of fashion-based car shopping.
I’ve noticed that most Crown Vic taxis have that swiveling spotlight mounted above the driver’s-door mirror, just like police cars. Since Crown Vics are sold solely as taxis and police cars, is the spotlight now standard equipment for the model?
Even if that were the intention, it wouldn’t work like that. I have a retired '94 Caprice (white, steel wheels, spotlight…), and people will either move out the way like you say, or they stay put, and drive slow thinking they’re trying to be careful, and you end up trapped.
It probably was a cop car to begin with.
Police cars have reinforced frames and axles amongst other stuff which let them be abused a great deal more than the typical car. This is one of the reasons many retired police cars make their way into the taxi business.
I don’t quite get what the OP means. Using New York as an example since it is hard to miss all the taxis there, within my memory must of the cabs used to be the classic Yellow Cab design. That could never be confused with a police car. They have since gone to the Crown Victoria. It is one of the few fleet cars that are being made. Chevy does not make the Caprice anymore. It makes an Impala police package but that is too small to be a good taxi. And now there are quite a few minivan cabs. More room for luggage, better handicap access. The minivans can not be confused with police cars. And even the Crown Vics can not be confused with police cars. They have a lit yellow light that says “taxi”. Many have a large advertising billboard on the roof. And they are bright yellow.
People do not get out of the way for cabs in New York. People do not get out of the way for ambulances. That is why taxidrivers drive like Rickie Bobby.
Outside of New York, it makes perfect sense. In Chicago, we have some yellow cabs, but more of them are white or (gods help me) teal. It’s the white ones that are, at first glance, confusing, especially in the rear view mirror.
Our taxi billboards run the length of the car, so in a rear view mirror, they’re just, “something on top of that white car” which is pretty firmly encoded in my limbic system as “COP!!!” Here’s an example.
Most of our taxis don’t have that billboard on top, though, just a smaller TAXI sign, which again trips my amygdala into overdrive.Like this one.
Here’s a Chicago police carfor comparison. And here’s an Illinois State Trooper car, even worse!
It’s not like I can’t tell the difference when I actually stop and look, it’s that out of the corner of my eye or in the rear view mirror at night, there’s a heart stopping moment or two before I sort it out.
No, only in some places in the US. In Germany, Taxis are white (usually Merceds or BMW), and police cars are green.
I think my phrasing was ambiguous, and I apologize. I did not mean, “With the sole exception of New York”, I meant literally, “Look around in some places that are outside the borders of New York and you’ll see some taxis which are the same colors as police cars.”
In Toronto and Montreal, some of the taxi companies have all their cars painted in a particular colour scheme, usually something eye-catching like orange-and-green. Other ones just have sedans with bog-standard paint jobs in a variety of colours. They’ve all got the cab light on top and don’t have anything written across the hood like most cop cars, so there’s no confusion.
Y’know, I don’t think I’ve ever seen the stereotypical yellow cab.
I’d be kind of surprised if the larger taxi cab companies relied heavily on retired police cars… I could see individual operators doing that, but this is practically every Crown Vic in a large fleet.
I did notice spotlights on some of the minivans being used by local fleets last night, so apparently taxi operators find the spotlights useful. Maybe to look for house addresses?
Be surprised then, when police cars come up at the auto auctions there are often 10 - 12 bought up by the same company who then either sell or lease them to the cab companies.
I drove a taxi in the largest company in L.A. and all the cabs were “retired” Crown Victoria police cars. In fact, only the smaller, individual operators (those who owned their own cab) had other models. (Also Bell Cabs, of Beverly Hills–a relatively small fleet–had different models.) But that was a few years ago. I think they’ve gotten different cars now.
I drive cab part time in Madison, and yes, 90% of our sedans are Crown Vic police interceptors.
The company buys them at police auction. They are very fun to drive - they have a supercharged V8 in them and you can definitely feel the modifications for handling and suspension. Surprisingly, they have a very tight turning radius too, although that might be all Crown Vics and not just the cop cars.
That said, a lot of cab companies (including ours) are converting a fair portion of the fleet to minivans - we use Town & Countries. They are uber comfortable and have great mileage (which is critical to overhead)
Fo Shizzle,
Picker
The owner of the cab company I worked for bought old police Crown Vics from an auction, had them painted yellow and lettered, added radios and meters, and put them to work. One of the units I drove still had the spotlight.
Interesting! Thanks.
Are the spotlights used much then?