Living about 70 miles north of NYC makes it relatively easy for me to come across vehicles from the five boroughs. Usually, they’re quite a bit cheaper than similar models closer to home. That’s probably because they’re a bit more worn down than the cars who’ve lived their lives outside the city. I recently came across this former taxi cab while browsing craigslist. Where will it spend its golden years? Not at the scrap yard, apparently.
“This car is in good shape, no mechanical issues, clean carfax, clear title.”
That’s how the seller described the C-Max on craigslist. I find it very hard to believe that a car approaching 300k miles has no mechanical issues. Perhaps its status as a fleet vehicle ensured regular maintenance? It’s possible. A Jalopnik post from 2015 briefly discussed how a 2008 Ford Escape Hybrid taxi fared after 500k miles. Apparently, that particular vehicle received an oil change every three weeks and was in the shop for new seals so it could be sold privately. And it was in very good shape, all things considered.
In any event, I have to imagine this thing has experienced at least one fender bender. That front clip is a completely different yellow than the rest of the car. Then again, I don’t think Ford equipped these for fleet use. It could just be a bad paint job.
Presumably, the C-Max is littered with scratches, dents, and dings. But it’s still relatively intact. Hybrids seem to fare pretty well as taxis. And if you can get over bulbous looks of the C-Max, you’d be getting a pretty competent one. Various publications pegged the C-Max’s 0-60 time at around 8.3 seconds, which is actually pretty quick for a hybrid. Since they’re based on Ford’s Global C Platform, they sport a good ride and handling balance too. Although the suspension on this C-Max might need some new parts. These weren’t the most fuel efficient entries in the segment, but they can still achieve around 40 mpg combined.
Even if this Ford is in good condition, the interior has seen better days. It’s exactly what you’d expect from a retired taxi.
Seating is not ideal either. The driver and passenger seat bottoms and the entire second row had the standard cloth swapped out for that odd feeling vinyl that’s probably easy to clean and most definitely hard to live with. That seat does not look comfortable. I wonder if it can be easily replaced?
This would be the perfect car for those YouTube auto enthusiasts who buy troublesome cars and detail their experiences with them. For everyone else, it’s a hard sell. Especially at $2,700. Personally, I’d pay $500 for it provided I could replace the seats easily. The C-Max, like other hybrids that see taxi duty, are pretty much designed for stop and go traffic, which explains why they hold up so well. This yellow submarine just might have a few more adventures left in it.
Head here for the ad.
I was quite interested in the C-Max a half year before it became available in the US. Ford initially was going to offer the gasoline-only Grand C-Max here – a stretched version with sliding doors that made it a sort of microvan in the vein of the Mazda 5. Then at the last minute, the Grand C-Max (which was going to be called simply the C-Max in the States) was cancelled and instead we’d only be getting the shorter versions in hybrid or PHEV configurations only. I have to believe the C-Max name confused many Americans who aren’t familiar with the European “C segment” designation.
Anyway, there’s no way I’d buy a retired NYC taxicab of any sort.
The cancellation of the 7-seat C-Max for North America was rectified with the introduction of the redesigned Transit Connect which has now taken the Mazda 5’s place in the minivan market. It also seats up to 7 but has a good bit more interior room.
At one time the Toyota RAV4 & Nissan Rogue had 3rd-row seats but I bet they were tight!
I love the ad itself. Offers anything you want in a car, even if you don’t know it. Alternating text in Craig’s famous ALL CAPS style.
The ad is totally bizarre. They list hundreds of cars, many strictly European models. WTF??
It’s an aid to using CL search filters … in case you want to cross-shop a C Max, Skoda Octavia, and Vauxhall Viva. I suppose they copy/pasted a list from somewhere. Odd set of cars to be sure.
I’ll take the Skoda off their hands!
What’s the deal with the illegible doorjamb placard?
I wonder about the condition of the hybrid battery
I…can’t. Even for $500. I’m sure that it does benefit from having had regular mechanical maintenance but how do you maintain a battery? 270,000 city miles means a lot of juice went through those cells. If the battery has been replaced, maybe $500. But even then I’d rather have something less sophisticated for my beater. Conventional wisdom says that when you buy a $500 car you are going to be doing your own
nursingwrenching. This isn’t an old Ford Panther.I don’t know what $2700 buys in terms of a car in New York these days, but it does buy a heck of a lot of Uber rides, and a metric ton of subway tokens.
Hybrids treat their batteries very gently. mostly by not letting them fully charge or discharge. IIRC most Ford and Toyota hybrids- along with PHEVs like the Chevy Volt- only charge the battery to ~80% and only allow discharge to 25-30%.
Every car has a story and this buggy likely has some good ones. Just like every other cab in their inventory; they have nothing if not variety at that dealer.
The seats likely have four bolts and a wiring plug, so an exchange should be easy.
With the taxi business here having just closed due to Uber, perhaps this would be a great starter if I were more enterprising in the taxi world. Hauling drunk legislators around could be fun.
Yeah, 10 minutes tops to remove and replace each seat. But there isn’t enough hand sanitizer in the world to make that car a daily driver. I’d rather try to recommission some of the Hantavirus Specials I can find at the junkyard.
The bio lab on the inside of this thing is what killed my enterprising streak. I’d be better off buying an old pool car from the Office of Administration, the agency which oversees most of the state fleet here in town. They have oodles of W-body Impalas, so same purchase price (or less) and less of an ick-factor.
I don’t know about that, at least in my state you do need to be selective with pool cars, they frequently have more stains, supposedly coffee stains, than this car. That said ones you do have cars that are assigned to someone that can be well kept.
That said I did purchase a C-Max from my state that ended its life in the pool. However it started its life as a deep under cover Dept of Corrections vehicle, complete with illegally dark window tinting. So it was pretty clean. It was easily twice the price of a W-body though.
But if you managed to live past the initial shock to your system, just think of the heavy duty immune system you would rock!
Yeah, not so quick with that estimate. Seat replacement is not always a simple plug and play procedure in a modern car. Yeah there are some you can still get away with it, and this C-Max could plug and play the driver’s seat, but you may get a SRS light if you change the passenger seat and may at the minimum need to do a module reset if not a full calibration. At the very minimum you do need to properly de-power the air bag system before disconnecting the seat wiring.
However many modern cars at the minimum should have the calibration of the occupant classification sensors checked if not a full calibration, or programing in some cases.
Besides a compatible scan tool, you’ll be wanting a plastic butt and corresponding weights for some vehicles. Here are the items needed if you are working on certain Chrysler products.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Miller-9077-Occupant-Classification-Seat-Weight-Set-Jeep-Dodge/274184206876?epid=1923055307&hash=item3fd6a6fa1c:g:Q7sAAOSwy7lc0cTg
Luckily for Fords you just need a couple of these industry standard scale calibration weights and not a $2000+ plastic butt and weights. https://www.amazon.com/Cast-Iron-Calibration-Weight-500g/dp/B01B4VDTKG
I’m not sure I’d want to hear many of the stories a NYC taxi could tell…
IIRC the C-Max and Escape used the same seats, just like they had the same instrument panel.
Times have changed, in this case for the better: When my wife worked for the State Legislature, drunk legislators would drive themselves… no taxi or Uber needed.
In fact, some of the senators and representatives gave their staff tips on how to drive when intoxicated (for example, to help yourself drive in a straight line, keep your hands at 11 and 1 on the wheel and extend your forefingers straight up, which will provide a visual effect that makes it easier not to weave… that tip was provided to her by a State Senator).
Drunk legislators are definitely still a thing. NYS Assembly Minority Leader Brian Kolb got hit with a DWI several days after telling people they shouldn’t be driving under the influence:
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/ny-lawmaker-brian-kolb-who-warned-about-driving-drunk-resigns-n1110316
I actually met that guy when I was an intern for the Assembly. All I can say is that I’m not surprised by his behavior.
Haha, no. There’d be no reason to spend anywhere near that much for an economical car that is beat to death and looks like it, unless maybe you wanted to impersonate a taxi driver. Why would a cab company even want to sell it with valuable parts in it such as a battery if it was still good?
I can’t even imagine getting into a haggling argument with a sketchy used car dealer named Bobby hawking old cabs on Staten Island. He also has a much better looking C-Max SE in white with a few less miles for similar money.
“Why would a cab company even want to sell it with valuable parts in it such as a battery if it was still good?”
Tax purposes? If they categorize their vehicles as depreciating assets, then it may be to their advantage to replace them at a certain age regardless of condition.
I mean why sell a good battery. I’m sure they can figure out the health of their batteries and swap a good one from a car to be sold into a car with a worse one. Or certainly not just sell the healthiest car in the fleet. A big city cab from a company that day-leases the cars to the drivers may be “maintained” but isn’t generally driven with any kind of regard for longevity of the mechanicals as opposed to the average owner operated kind.
You are making the assumption that they have cars with bad batteries, this is a Ford, not a Toyota so batteries are near worthless as there is virtually zero demand.
I believe that NYC requires taxi companies to use cars that are no older than seven model years. So a 2013 taxi is aging out of the fleet.
And reading this post has reminded me that I haven’t actually ridden in a taxi in about 25 years. I don’t miss it. The last taxi ride I took was in the late 1990s when I was visiting friends in Philadelphia – it was an ancient Crown Vic that had so many rattles, I think it even rattled when idling. I’m sure taxi services have improved since then, but still I don’t see myself longing to find out.
We used to buy well used Pinto station wagons from Purolator who ran courier fleets. These had a lot of miles, but 5 digit odometers. They were all white. Some had recent engine, transmission, or rear end swaps. They had aged out of the fleet.
We would junk yard source a drivers seat, as the other seats were like new. We then applied aftermarket fake wood trim which was a flat decal. The used car lots couldn’t get enough of them.
These were better than taxi’s as they had only one occupant, the bodies were usually straight, and the actually appeared to be well maintained. ” A fine car at less than a fine car price.”
In 2015 we rented a C-Max Hybrid for several days on a vacation on the Front Range of the Colorado Rockies. Drove it in urban Denver traffic and to well over 10000 feet in the mountains. At the time, our daily driver was our 2008 Prius. The C Max was a much nicer driving experience from the perspective of power, ride, handling and general feel, with a good ride and seating comfort, especially compared to a seven year old Prius. The interior space utilization was far worse than the Prius, and the hybrid powertrain status display made the Gen 2 Prius’ cheesy screen images look like paragons of clear, legible infographics, and I gave up trying to use the radio while driving. Gas mileage was pretty good considering the grades and elevation. I wanted so much to like it, but came away disappointed.
If you can spot how beat up a car is in poorly shot Craigslist photos, then that car is seriously BEAT! front bumper cover and rear tag light filler held on with drywall screws? – check! Scrapes and ill-fitting body panels? – check, check!! Mismatched paint? – check, check, check!!! No need to even talk about the sad interior at this point. At least it still proudly wears its taxi cab yellow like a badge of honor. It’s not pretending to be anything that is isn’t.
I raise you a 766kkm (~475k mile) 2.0 TSI VW Passat with timing issues-related damage I found on the Internet. It’s still worth something.
https://www.otomoto.pl/oferta/volkswagen-passat-2-0-tsi-211km-uszkodzony-rozrzad-vat-23-ID6CIPci.html#d764122f2b
This looks like a car they’d use on a TV show or movie to represent how down out the main character is. In fact I that’s the only realistic future it has unless another taxi service scoops it up, I have never, ever, seen or heard of anyone driving a decommissioned taxi.
The son of a good friend of mine had a 1997 P71 Crown Vic, first used as a police car and then as a taxi. Had 300,000 miles on it. Needed a lot of work but he used it as a daily driver until it was destroyed in an accident.
Police cars lead hard lives but, normally, they get rotated after a certain amount of miles so there’s at least a chance of getting one that’s not too bad.
But an ex-taxicab? What could be wrong with a cab that the company decided it had to go?
Some municipalities have age limits so a car gets retired even if it still is in good running and driving shape. NYC is one of those places with an age limit.
There’s a guy in Vermont driving an old NYC taxi cab, a Crown Vic with the markings still on the car:
I’ve seen lots of retired taxis still on the road, usually Crown Vics, but there are a few Prius running around. Yeah they may have 350k miles on them but if they keep running….
Another reason two-motor full hybrids like Fords and Toyotas can last, is how they start the engine. Ordinary engines starting cold have very low oil pressure the first second or two they’re turning over. Its 12v starter just doesn’t turn over very fast. A cold start puts metal on metal under load. A full hybrid’s high-voltage motor spins the crankshaft up to operating speed with no load and senses good oil pressure before applying fuel and spark. You can see it in the oil. A full hybrid’s oil stays much cleaner.
With no transmission or clutches, there’s less to wear out. And as pointed out above full hybrid batteries are not subjected to 0% or 100% charge. So this Ford’s engine and hybrid drive train are likely in surprisingly good shape.
No they don’t sense the oil pressure, they just spin them up to speed and then start injecting fuel, spark starts as soon as the engine starts spinning. At only 270k this one should still have a couple of more years worth of taxi use in it if taken to a place where it isn’t too old to qualify.
A Prius engine won’t run without oil pressure, that’s confirmed in the forums. Regardless, the proof is in the oil. It stays much cleaner over time than in a conventional engine.
The reason the oil stays cleaner is because the engine doesn’t run 30% or more of the miles covered and rarely runs the engine if the vehicle is not in motion, in most climates.
None of the Ford systems to date sense the pressure as a condition of starting the engine. I’ve had at least one of all 3 and when the oil is changed the engine starts just the same as it does any other time, except that the low oil pressure light is on briefly.
CC effect today – I saw a Nissan NV200 in taxi yellow on a Subaru dealer’s lot in Rhode Island. Also a NYC cab?
High mileage cars always have a story to tell. While this C-Max doesn’t appeal to me, primarily due to the hi-vis yellow, I’m sure you could get it for $2k plus ttt. Not an entirely bad deal for a road worthy, kinda late model ride.
We took in a trade at the dealership recently. It is definitely auction bound. Should’ve got pics. A ‘04 Chevy Express work van. No dents, but very dirty with the back side coated with oil from a powertrain leak, also with what was left of the obligatory Express peeling paint on the hood. Inside, literally 1/3 of the driver’s seat bottom is missing. Two inches deep worth of papers on the dash, and another three to four inches on the floor, mixed with hand tools, catalogs, uneaten lunches, and a roadside emergency kit. Looks like someone shoveled it into the van. The cargo area itself had a shelving system full of tools, opened mortar mix bags, blades and just about anything a tile contractor could need, all covered with a light mortar dust. Several inches deep, front to back. I purloined a dusty commercial grade circular saw and a trenching shovel. It appears they traded it in, and said to hell with all those dirty tools, we’re buying all new. Totally understandable, I’ve seen it before.
It’s always strange to me how these old Express vans come in, so beat up, but nearly identical to a new one.
Anyhow, I needed to move it to another parking spot, only to find reverse did not work. Well…that sucks. While I’m sitting there, weighing my options and trying to get reverse to engage, a salesman walks by and says, “That is one serious ‘Piece Of Shit’, ain’t it?” My reply, after glancing at the odometer, “This thing has 392k of probably the damndest miles you could put on a truck. I think it has earned the right not to be called a ‘Piece Of Shit’!”
A NYC taxi with 270,000 city miles on it have any value? Ah, no…
I don’t know, Other then the bright yellow, I don’t see a problem with paying $2700 for it. I think it would make a great everyday driver. Say you buy it and you have to replace the batteries. There are a few shops near me that sell refurbished battery kits for these cars for under $1000 (after you return the old batteries for a core). Replacing the seats at a pick it pull it junk yard nearby is $40 per seat (So $120 total), you still get a good car for a good price.
For me, I would have the seats detailed and put covers over them and be done with it.
As for body damage. I challenge somebody to find a car that is daily driven in the Five Boroughs that does not have any body damage on it
If it was here in Maryland, i would consider it.
I’m on a 2015 C-Max plug-in hybrid remove the plug put a solar panel in the place of the panoramic window in the roof now I don’t have to plug it in anymore and I get 118 miles to the gallon and I now have 142, 000 MI on the car
No problems whatsoever I can see it easy running to 500,000 miles I love it
Surely the carfax history (or lack of) would mean nothing when repairs wouldn’t be reported?
Local taxis usually get sold with 400-600k miles on them, probably for a bit less than this but still with life left in them. Sometimes with a cheap coat of paint and some “civilianising” so they present better, sometimes with the shadow of the checker ‘striping’ showing against the rest of the paint fading.
Cheap base for a drag car – https://www.whichcar.com.au/tv/carnage/ford-falcon-turbo-taxi-carnage-episode-22