A City and Its Cab
It seems that every other movie that gets a general theatrical release is set in New York City these days. Ever since the introduction of ‘talkies’ during the last century, the five boroughs have played host to every kind of cinematic story, including favorites like sappy rom-coms like When Harry Met Sally, crime flicks like Goodfellas and The French Connection, as well as cultural touchstones such as Do The Right Thing and Saturday Night Fever. But one of the most critically acclaimed films to be set in the City is none other than the 1976 film Taxi Driver. Directed by Martin Scorsese, the Palm d’Or-winning film captures a different era of New York; a time when it was known for its grit rather than its glamour.
Its protagonist, Travis Bickle, played by Robert DeNiro, is a lonely, sleepless Vietnam vet who reacts to the conditions around him as a night-shift taxi driver. From behind the wheel of a Checker A11, Bickle navigates a grimy, morally decayed Manhattan. Here, the cab acts as a rolling confessional booth, a cage, a vessel that physically separates him from the city he both loves and despises. The choice for DeNiro’s character to drive a Checker made perfect sense. By 1976, the Checker was as synonymous with the city as the Empire State Building or a slice of New York pizza. Their unmistakable silhouette made it the definitive “New York cab” in the minds of locals, transplants and tourists alike.
While Taxi Driver prominently featured a Checker, its story doesn’t stop with Scorsese and DeNiro. For decades, the Checker was the New York City taxicab: a working-class icon built not for beauty, but for unmistakable utility. It was the car that never wore out, driven by people who couldn’t afford it to. To understand it, is to understand something essential about New York City itself.
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Built in Kalamazoo, Sold to New York
When the Checker Motor Corporation started out in Kalamazoo, Michigan in 1922, it had one mission: build the best cars that can be taxis. As an antithesis to Detroit’s Big Three forgone styling trends and model-year refreshes, in favor of incremental improvements on a proven formula; a tall, roomy, body-on-frame vehicle engineered to absorb punishment. New York City was one of Checker’s biggest markets, so vehicles were engineered to exceed the city’s strict Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC) standards. In 1954, Checker’s dominant grip on the New York taxi market was nearly wiped out when the TLC mandated that taxi wheelbases be kept to a maximum of 127 inches between the front and rear wheels…