Forgotten Classics: Giugiaro's Taxicabs—A Checkered History

In the mid-Seventies, the Museum of Modern Art commissioned Giorgetto Giugiaro of Ital Design to design a prototype for a modern taxi. MOMA's home city was by then known for its clogged streets and familiar yellow Checker cabs.  Not surprisingly, Giugiaro came up with something completely different. With the cooperation of Alfa Romeo, he created a 5-passenger taxi in 1976 that measured 158" long, a whopping 46" shorter than the familiar Checker.  Power came from a fuel-efficient 1.3 liter boxer 4 cylinder driving the front wheels, with independent suspension front and rear. The Alfa shield grille shape is subtly (maybe too subtly) worked into the 5-mph bumper at the front.

Innovative features included wide, sliding passenger doors on both flanks, flat floors, and wheelchair storage space under the seats. Giugiaro's MOMA taxi offered striking space and fuel efficiency advantages over other cabs, especially the Checker. Sadly, it didn't attract enough interest from potential customers to put it into production...

Not discouraged by non-adoption of his Alfa-Romeo MOMA cab, Giugiaro proposed the Lancia Megagamma van above in 1978.  Front wheels were again powered by a boxer four, but this time by the 2.5 liter SOHC Gamma unit.  Driver's cabin and luggage space were more ample than in the MOMA taxi, as the Megagamma van was just under a foot longer at 169.7".  Fuel tank and spare tire were located below the flat floor.  Drag coefficient was surprisingly low for such a cubic form, at 0.34. Fiat managment showed a lack of vision by deciding not to produce this van.  Six years later, Chrysler engineers would confirm the soundness of Giugiaro's concept, when their own front-drive minivans helped revive their company's fortunes.

This wasn't the first time that Giugiaro had been involved in a taxi project.  Eight years before the MOMA project, he had begun a complete restyling of the Checker cab for Alejandro De Tomaso after the sports car builder had purchased Ghia. The Checker project was continued under Tom Tjaarda after Giugiaro left Ghia to start Ital Design. The resulting '68 Ghia Centurion as completed by Tjaarda, above, shared the clean flanks and glassy greenhouse of Giugiaro's previous 4-door project, the Iso S4 below, but none of the iso's sleek proportions.  The tall roof and too-vertical angles of the Centurion's windshield and backlight made for plenty of space, and also concealed the car's great length, as it was on the 129" wheelbase option offered by Checker. Though the Centurion was more modern-looking than Checker's standard design, the company apparently decided it didn't offer enough advantages to put into production. 

That standard Checker design had been largely unchanged from the A8 model below, which went into production in January 1956.  

A8 advantages over the previous A6 model shown rushing down a film noir street below included 30% more interior space and easily removable fenders, an important feature in an environment conducive to fender benders...

Despite the proposals from Ghia for a more modern-looking Checker cab, and from MOMA and Giugiaro for a taxicab revolution, Checker's basic design from the A8 stayed in production until 1982, receiving quad headlights in 1958, with Chevrolet inline sixes and small-block V8s supplanting the Continental L-head six in 1965.  It was such a familiar shape on American city streets that it was likely what you thought of when you thought "taxi."

It was a blocky and unrefined shape, but it was a friendly one, especially when one answered your hand signal for transport on a freezing New Year's Eve in New York.  In fact, it was such a friendly-looking car that this example has taken advantage of that blockiness and been modeled in Lego components at Legoland New York, delighting children of all ages...

Photo Credits:  

Top thru 3rd from top:  wikimedia.com

4th:  allcarindex.com

5th:  Iso Rivolta, featured on story-cars.com

6th:  Checker Car Club, on checkerworld.org

7th:  imcdb.org

8th & bottom:  Dr. Marcus Nashelsky

Book Reviews in Brief: Source Material for Car Wonks & Historians

 

An old 1954 paperback copy of Ken Purdy's 1952 The Kings of the Road was this writer's intro to "serious" automotive literature (well, books on cars, anyway) around the time he became entranced by Road & Track after one formative year of living in LA (Dad and I loved it; pioneer cyclist Mom hated it) during the late 50s.  Purdy could effortlessly pull a grade-school kid into stories about Bugattis and Duesenbergs, of race driver Tazio Nuvolari, and how to avoid confusing Hispano-Suizas with Isotta-Fraschinis...

Borgeson and Jaderquist's Sports and Classic Cars appeared 3 years after Purdy's book, as the sports car boom was beginning to gather momentum in the US, and collectors were suddenly waking up to landmarks of design and engineering made during the interwar years that had sometimes been sold for scrap during WW2.  The photography is monochrome and sparse by modern standards, but the book is strong on history, and the specification tables at the end, covering Prewar Sports, Prewar Classic, and Postwar cars, are a valuable source of information.  If you want to compare engine specs., dimensions and prices offered by Lancia before and after WW2, for example, this book has you covered.

Wheelock-Freeman's Sports Cars appeared in 1955, the same year as the Borgeson / Jaderquist book, and while it has some specifications and prices, it focuses more on the visual impact of the cars. The Fifties marked the beginning of Italian dominance in industrial design as well as on the track, and Alexandre Georges covered then-new creations in color and monochrome photos.   As 1955 may have been a peak year for the number of sporting makes on sale in the US, you'll find chapters on etceterini like the Siata, exotics like the 4-cam V8 Pegaso from Spain, and on the Chrysler-powered Cunningham from Florida, which was then in its last year.  

The Sports Car Pocketbook, by Britain's WIlliam Boddy in 1961, proved to be a bountiful source of info on everything from the cyclecars of the Teens and Twenties to upper crust esoterica like the Brough Superior and the Lammas Graham, as well as cars considered modern at the dawn of the Sixties.  Specs. were provided for key models of each make, but the author had a special love for obscure club racers.  If you want to know how to tell a Senechal from a Salmson, Boddy's your man.

In The Great Cars from 1967, Ralph Stein wrote something that was almost as much a memoir of a life spent chasing classic cars as it was a depiction of the cars themselves. The depiction, though, was pretty riveting for a high school kid, including recollections of encounters with France's exotic Talbot-Lago, arcane English machinery like the Invicta and Frazer Nash, and better-known classics from Alfa Romeo and Mercedes-Benz.  The pages are splashed with color photos by Tom Burnside, as well as historic monochrome shots from races that were already decades in the past.  

The Cruel Sport covered an especially hazardous time in Formula 1 racing, when a driver's chances of survival were said to be not all that much better than in trench warfare.  Robert Daley created text and monochrome photos depicting the drivers, machines, factories and races that made the world of Grand Prix racing from 1959 through 1963, and later expanded to book to include the period through 1967, after the 3 liter cars had taken over from the 1.5 liter formula of 1961-'65.  It's stunning to page through this book and reflect that rollover protection was only introduced in F1 cars in the mid-Sixties, that seat belts were not required equipment until 1972, and to realize how many of these drivers were gone a few years after the original publication date.

In All My Races from 2009, Stirling Moss recalls details of all his races from the first, a victory in the Cullen Cup in a prewar BMW 328 on March 2 1947, to the last (race #585), when the driver who later became Sir Stirling crashed Rob Walker's Lotus 18/21 at Goodwood's Glover Trophy on April 23, 1962, ending his racing career and nearly his life.  In the intervening 15 years of race accounts, the greatest driver who never won a World Championship sheds some light on the people and machines who made the era what it was.

By the time G.N. Georgano released A History of Sports Cars in 1970, there was plenty of history ot recount, at a time when the freewheeling, innovative attitude that led to everything from the spindly voiturettes of the Twenties to the wild Lamborghini Miura of 1967, with its transverse mid-mounted V12 sharing its crankcase oil with the transmission, was about to give way to a world of safety regulations and environmental concerns.  Georgano documented the history with chapters covering Emergence through the Twenties, Thirties, Post War Recovery and Today (the Sixties), with a nation-by-nation treatment. The text is supplemented by monochrome and color photos, with coverage of specialist car makers as well as major producers, and the engineers and designers behind the ideas in what we can now see as a kind of golden age.   

Historians Richard Langworth and Graham Robson released their revised edition of their Complete Book of Collectible Cars in 1987, extending the scope to include cars built as early as 1930; the first version had started with 1940, and thus missed a herd of classics. It includes US as well as European makes, and is pretty complete, but because the writers focused on their idea of production cars, you won't find an OSCA or Gordini* in here.  For some reason, Bugatti and Delahaye are included, but not Talbot-Lago. And while the Datsun Z is in here, the Toyota 2000GT (already a collectible in the Eighties) is not, nor is the Honda S600/800 series. Still, it's remarkable how many times one finds oneself going to this book for production figures and dates, engine sizes, wheelbases and weights. 

Beyond the cars, this blog explores the architecture and cityscapes of the automotive era, and urbanists have written thoughtful studies of these as the present century approached.  As this is an election year when voters are considering (one hopes) serious questions of history and public policy, it might not be a bad moment to put in a plug for James Howard Kunstler's The Geography of Nowhere, from 1994, and his more hopeful Home from Nowhere from 4 years later. The first book details how the postwar growth of US suburbs led to placeless expanses of shopping malls and parking lots, old neighborhoods sliced up by freeways, and cities strangled by gridlock, and the second book explores how we might take steps to make our living places friendlier to each other and to the ecology of the only planet we know supports life...

*Errata: Owing the the uninvited and annoying interference of AutoSpell, "Gordini" was changed to "Gordon" without my noticing.  Wrong.  Britain's Gordon-Keeble was included in Langworth's book, while the French Gordini sports racers from the Fifties were not.

Boulder Classics and Coffee: The Usual Suspects + Porsche 912 Polo

Now that it's almost time for the last Classics & Coffee of the year on Sunday. October 27, we're finally getting around to reviewing September's gathering.  There were lots of old friends and increasingly familiar old cars,  a sign that the event now has lots of regulars...

...including this Bugeye Sprite heading up a row of Austin-Healeys.

Big Healeys were represented by a 100-6 with graceful body design by Gerry Coker, who also designed the Bugeye.  By the time the Bugeye appeared in 1958, Coker was surprised to see that BMC had deleted his retractable headlights as a cost-cutting measure that, ironically, gave the car its character and name.  By the time the less curvy Sprites like the red car above appeared in 1961, Coker had been working in America for 3 years.

This black Ferrari 355 is a reminder of what a loss it is that Pininfarina no longer designs or builds car bodies,  A mid-engined V8, it offered cleaner detailing than the previous 348 and was built from 1994 to 1999. 

Familiar faces include now-vintage BMW 3-Series, Alfa GTV6, Karmann Ghia VW, and a pagoda-roof Mercedes SL without its famous concave-surface hardtop in place.

Another familiar face from my neighborhood is this metallic yellow Alfa Romeo Type 916, a front-drive roadster never officially imported into the USA.  Featured in more depth in a previous post, the Pininfarina design was built in coupe and open forms, and the 916 series was offered from 1993 to 2004.  

A row of Brits includes the '76 Lotus Spring in the foreground, a Triumph Spitfire with Honda S2000 engine , a Triumph TR4A in white, and a yellow TR6.  The Lotus and Spitfire have been featured in earlier posts, but it's worth noting that the Lotus Type 907 engine was a pioneer of the 4-valves per cylinder twin-cam four in the US, and notable for making 140 to 160 hp from 2 liters.  Nearly a third of a century later, Honda's S2000 engine with 4 valves per cylinder could make 120 hp for each of its 2 liters.

A De Tomaso Pantera is a less-familiar visitor.  The black car with gold wheels is a reminder that Lincoln Mercury dealers sold a mid-engined V8 with Italian bodywork (designed by American architect Tom Tjaarda for Ghia) from 1971-'74. It's parked next to a red Ferrari Testarossa...

There were plenty of air-cooled Porsche 911s, but none pleased this writer as much as the 993 below.  Last of the air-cooled Porsches, the 993 was offered from January 1994 to early 1998, which has always seemed like a short run, considering that it smoothed out the visual hiccups in the original, like headlights that were neither vertical nor contoured into the fenders (see above), and finally integrated the 5-mph bumpers into the fenders and nose, avoiding the clunky look of 911 bumpers that arrived to meet US standards in 1974, and stayed until they were smoothed out a bit on the 964 in '89.  Another thing Porsche changed on the 993 was the Targa version, which substituted a smooth, coupe-like roof form with sliding glass roof for the visual interruption of the anodized B-pillar / roll-bar featured from 1965. This coupe specimen has an especially fetching form because it doesn't have the "wide body" option which involved increased rear track.  It's parked next to a Lancia Delta Integrale HF that we'd also like in our fantasy garage...

The other Porsche that attracted our attention was an early 912.  Well, sort of.  Designated a 912 Super, nothing like it was ever offered by Porsche.  It has a special 4-cylinder, twin-plug, 2.4 liter version of the air-cooled SOHC 911 engine designed and built by Dean Polopolus of Polo Motors in Temecula, CA.  The idea is to have 911 performance with handling more akin to the original 912, because the Polo engine weighs 100 lb. less than a 2.4 liter 911. The original weight difference between a standard 912 and 911 engine was 120 lb.

In addition to this engine, the Polo 912 has a number of other design tweaks to denote It's a special car, including the custom engine vent grille, 912 Super insignia, and flush-contoured license plate panel, and the piece de resistance, the "NO911NV" license plate.  At the front, you can barely see the specially contoured vent grilles next to the parking lights.

The label on the fan shroud tells the story of the Polo engine, which has been made in sizes from 1.5 to 2.4 liters.  As the engine alone costs around $30k, we wondered if an easier way to achieve more balanced handling in an air-cooled Porsche would be to simply find a nice example of the mid-engined 914-6, with near 50/50 balance.  Admittedly, you'd need to get used to the humorless, boxy styling of the 914, but then again, you're inside looking out when you're flinging a Porsche around a twisty 2-lane...

Another approach that occurred to us had appeared at a Classics & Coffee last year. Farland Classic Restoration in Englewood, CO converted a similar short wheelbase (87") 912 to a full electric power offering about 100 miles of range in normal driving.  One goal of the conversion was to avoid making structural changes, like cutting into the floor platform. As a result, as with Jaguar's prototype electric E-type conversion*, one could theoretically convert the car back to IC power.  But that's hard to imagine, as the 912 EV offers much better acceleration than the original along with better balance.  Also, you can keep shifting gears if you like. Unlike many EVs, the 912 conversion* uses the original 4-speed transaxle.  912s were also offered with 5 speeds.

Farland quoted a price of $45,000 for converting a 912 (or 911) like this one.  That's more than the roughly $30,000 you'd pay to buy a Polo engine for a 912.  But to make a fair comparison, the yellow Polo 912 features other impressive (and expensive) mods, and in either case you'd need to pay for a 912 to serve as your project base.  And two features of the Farland 912 EV jump out as advantages.  First, instead of just removing 100 pounds from the rearward weight bias, it changes the whole weight distribution from something like 40% front / 60% rear to the ideal 50/50.  Secondly, with the Farland approach you'll never need to stop at a gas station except to air the tires, clean the windshield or buy a chocolate bar...

*Footnote:  

The Porsche 912 EV was featured in our post for July 31, 2023.  Other classic conversions to electric power, including some Porsches and that Jaguar E-Type, are reviewed in "Classic Cars Go Electric", posted here on July 31, 2021. 

Photo Credits:  

All photos are by the author.