Four-wheeled future: Taking a ride in New York city's “Taxi of Tomorrow”
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Starting this fall, the mean streets of New York will have a new top banana, vehicularly speaking. After a reign by the venerable Ford Crown Victoria that seemingly began during the second mayoral administration of William F. Havemeyer, citizens of Gotham are to finally be granted a new taxi. Or, more to the point, 14,000 new taxis—each of them a Nissan NV200—which will phased in, in fulvous waves, over the coming years.
The Crown Vic, though beloved by fools, was already an automotive anachronism two decades ago—bulky, inefficient, cramped, and wallowy—when it became New York’s de facto yellow cab. It now falls somewhere between “walking dead” and “fossil.” The Japanese-designed mini-minivan that will replace it is none of those things.
To find out exactly what it is, we took advantage of Nissan’s hospitable offer of a ride, sending our intrepid stringer, Ben Keeshin, to report on and photograph this so-called Taxi of Tomorrow, while being shuttled around Manhattan’s Garment District. Click through to the slide show below to learn everything you need to know about the ToT.
