A Far Too Brief History of Checker Motors

[Music] you couldn't visit major East Coast cities or watch movies in the 70s and the 80s without seeing the iconic Checker Cabs running around on the streets they were so common they became part of the background noise but that hit a fascinating history of an auto manufacturer this is a far too brief history of checker welcome back to all cars y'all I am John and I'll be honest I think almost all of us know that iconic Checker Cab we see them in cities and TV shows and in movies but personally I've never really given them much thought I've seen minivans and Priuses and of course Crown Vics all used as cabs so I'd never thought about the checkers or where they really came from and it all starts with a gentleman named Morris market now Morris was born in Smolensk Russia in 1893 began work at a young age and by 19 had been promoted to a supervisor in the clothing Factory where he worked in 1913 he took his savings and at the age of 19 he emigrated to the United States where he spoke absolutely no English and he ended up having to borrow 25 dollars from a janitor at Ellis Island to pay the bond necessary to enter the country he made his way to Chicago where he had an uncle and where he worked there various jobs eventually working for a tailor now this business was successful and when the tailor died he bought the business from the Widow made a name for himself and was successful enough to bring his seven brothers and two sisters to the United States and he went on to make a fortune making uniforms for the United States Army in World War One the business remained successful after the war and Market looked to expand his Empire lomberg Auto Body manufacturing was the supplier to Commonwealth motors who were introducing their new Mogul model in 1919 in preparation loanberg took a fifteen thousand dollar personal loan for Morris to expand their business while the Mogul was well received it sold slowly and when Lombard defaulted on the loan Martin took the company over in late 1920 and renamed it Mark an automobile body a Commonwealth motors were having their own struggles with slow sales and entered bankruptcy in late 1921. Markin went to them proposed a stock Swap and took over Commonwealth combining these two companies into the Checker Cab Manufacturing in 1922. by 1924 Markin was buying up Checker Taxi operators licenses and finally gained full control of the company in 1937. interestingly around this time Checker was the first cab company to hire African-American drivers and the first to require drivers to pick up all fairs regardless of race oh and as a side note in 1929 Morris bought Yellow Cab Company from John Hertz yeah that hurts at this time in history there are two things to note about the taxi business the first is that taxis were originally considered point-to-point chauffeur Services primarily for the upper class and second that as they grew the competition for business turned violent businesses like hotels or Office Buildings would often limit access to just one Cab Company corrupt Chicago laws gave licenses to yellow cab drivers to use Municipal taxi stands while denying them to Checkers drivers so rival companies drivers would engage in brawls that sometimes resulted in deaths including outright Warfare between Pro and anti-unionization supporters so between 1922 and 1928 Morgan expanded his taxicab influence buying companies in New York Pittsburgh and Minneapolis and sadly the violence often spread to these new cities with their expansion in fact Morris's home was even firebombed in 1923 so he decided to move manufacturing out of Chicago and to Kalamazoo Checker's first car was the 1923 model C and updated version of the Mogul and it proved popular Morris expanded controlling not only sales and distribution to other Taxi fleets including in New York Boston Minneapolis and of course Chicago but also having an insurance company to cover them following this model where the H the H2 the e f and the g with the G being the first to offer a six cylinder as an option all previous models were four cylinders and in 1928 they unveiled their all-new model the K taxis at this time were large well-appointed and essentially limousines the model K performed well as it was stylish comfortable and both durable and reliable and was now a purpose-built taxi design it had 127 inch wheelbase and a Buddha six-cylinder making all of 27.3 horsepower as the only engine option it was a hit and made Checker one of the top two taxi cab builders in the US with the other being Yellow Cab which by this point was owned by General Motors since 1925. the model M was an all-new design on a modified K chassis and introduced in late 1930 it had a shorter wheelbase at 122 inches a far more powerful Buddha six-cylinder engine making 61 and a half horsepower and a distinctive style that made it instantly recognizable even in the dark by now the Great Depression was raging and while at first the company remained profitable by 1932 Checker began losing money the board of directors forced Boris out but Morris had met El cord years before and struck up a friendship so he reached out to court and asked him to take a controlling interest and check her and to reappoint Morris as president well Martin only controlled about five percent of the stock he had options for 60 percent and he sold these options to cord for less than a million dollars and Checker was integrated with auburn cord Duesenberg Checkers began cribbing Auburn style and using a Lycoming straight eight in their next car called the model y now this model was introduced in 1934 with several Innovations and more style it was a three box design with an integrated body trunk a first in the Auto industry and glass windows in the roof for sightseeing styling was heavily influenced by Auburn and used their 148 horsepower inline 8 the same as in the Auburn 850 in 1936 they offered a continental six cylinder as an option and this model was produced until 1939. importantly Checker was also a third party supplier of body stampings including truck bodies for Hudson Ford and REO motor car now under about 1936 the SEC was investigating cord and Markin for questionable dealings in the Checker stock and how it jumped from a price of about seven dollars a share to 69 a share between 1935 and 1936. Morris successfully bought back his company from cord right before cord ending up losing his businesses in 1939 the model A was introduced it was roomier it was the first Checker to move away from taxis as limousines removing the divider between the driver and the passenger other features such as a landelet top and glass roofs were included and patented by the company the driver's seat could adjust 15 different ways a vent directed fresh air into the driver compartment and the driver was now protected from the elements for the first time they were heated all to help them drive on longer shifts this model was only made for two years before production stopped for World War II now during the war checker-built retrieval trailers tank recovery vehicles and other types of trailers such as for petroleum they'd also partnered with American Bantam to build four prototype Jeeps that were both four-wheel drive and four-wheel steering it was rumored that during the war Morris had all the body tools and dyes melted down so after the war it was challenging situation of having to design and produce an all-new car to handle this he reached out to two outside Consultants Herbert snow and Ray Dietrich snow had worked for cord and was the engineering mine behind the front wheel drive system for them Dietrich had worked for Briggs Le Baron and Chrysler and was famous for his redesign of the Chrysler airflow that arguably saved Chrysler starting is the model B and then the model C snow proposed a rear engine rear-wheel drive car to minimize weight and maximize space using a continental six cylinder and a three-speed manual it also used the front and rear suspension brakes and wheels from a Studebaker during test it was found to handle poorly on its short 100 inch wheelbase and a decision to have passenger seating like a train where one row faced the other was questionable so the project was killed they then moved on to the model D which was again unconventional this time is a front-wheel drive vehicle with a transverse engine the wheelbase was stretched to 112 inches but with a total length of just 189.5 it was attractive but during over 100 000 miles of testing it too was rejected the car actually performed very well with real world testing showed it had excellent ride quality handling in the snow and comfort on the highway however it would be more expensive to produce and with higher maintenance costs for a front-wheel drive system Checker believed it would turn off taxi operators scrambling the company quickly developed the model A2 using the chassis and engine configuration of the pre-war Model A but with the recent model D body with 124 inch wheelbase and a length of 205 inches that use that Continental six-cylinder engine and it took a year to develop being unveiled in December of 1946 some amenities like the previously mentioned driver vent disappeared the next year they introduced the A3 their first entry into the non-taxi market and intended to be sold to limo companies it was an upgraded and slightly more luxurious model with seating for up to nine it was also the first model Checker began offering to the public the A4 and the A5 followed in 1950 with a slight increase in length as well as larger Windows seats and a grill three years later the A6 and the A7 came out as a taxi and a limo respectively the primary difference from the A4 and the A5 was the raised roof for more Headroom but 1956 the next model was ready called unsurprisingly the A8 and was designed to meet the new standards from New York City limiting the wheelbase of taxis to 120 inches this model introduced the basic body shape that came to Define Checker until the 1980s although the first year had single headlights the basic chassis was still familiar to the 1939 Model A and the drivetrain retained its Continental f226 I6 engine in 1958 the A9 was a restyled version of the A8 with dual headlights and a revised Grille and shortly after introduction began marketing the cars to the public the first of these was the A10 with the taxi equipment removed and offered in a four-door sedan and station wagon bodies in 1961 the a11 was introduced and this model stayed in service until the company stopped production in 1982. in 1962 the company switched from the Continental engine to a 3.8 liter Chevy inline six and an optional 4.6 liter V8 well the Continental was an old-fashioned L head design that produced only 89 horsepower it was overbuilt for longevity the company had been losing money on each engine and when they tried to raise prices Checker simply dropped them and moved to Chevy it kicked off Checker using more and more Chevy parts over the coming decades including Transmissions steering columns and much more the model was constantly updated to meet new safety and emission standards but sales began to slowly fall keep in mind this company could be profitable with six to seven thousand sales a year but that largely precluded designing a replacement with the A8 A9 the a11 Checker began selling to Consumers originally in 1960 they introduced the Superba with a rename to the marathon later between 1960 and 1968 they sold about a thousand Vehicles a year to Consumers but in 1969 that dropped to 760 and it never reached a thousand a year again throughout the 1970s taxi companies increasingly began using Autos from The Big Three As Checker was increasingly out of date big heavy slow and with poor fuel economy the body stamping equipment was quickly reaching 20 years old and the cars required manual labor to actually get the panels to fit properly the price had also slowly climbed into Buick territory and it was still a basic design the company didn't have the money or the vision to design a replacement well the consumer products such as the a12 marathon had a following based on their rugged and reliable designs at their price they still had rubber mats and hardboard ceilings variations of the car were available in the 60s and 70s through special luxury editions the metacar and the aerobus in July 1982 the last Checker Auto was produced and the company left auto manufacturing but that's not the end of the story first the last Checkered Cab in New York City retired in 1999 with 994 972 miles second Checker change Tack and became a subcontractor providing parts and stampings to other manufacturers those other areas of the business also continued to expand including the Yellow Cab in Chicago their insurance company manufacturing truck trailers and more some were sold off to other companies while Checker motors made body stampings for various GM truck lines and Chassis components for some Cadillacs by 2008 the Great Recession was upon us and Auto Sales collapsed in January 2009 the company declared bankruptcy at the time they were working with GM Chrysler Ford Navistar and GM China during the bankruptcy proceedings they were allowed to continue working on a limited capacity for General Motors and they found two potential buyers marmco group and Van Rob both of Canada now normco offered 650 000 for the stamped metal and Welding assemblies for GM trucks and vehicles and Van Rob paid just nine hundred and fifty thousand dollars for some of their other manufacturing equipment in both cases manufacturing was moved to Canada where parts of the Buick LaCrosse were now being made in 2010 Checker headquarters was sold for just under three million dollars and the company truly ceased to exist to me Checker always just was it was that part of the background noise or the fabric of these big cities and I never really considered the fascinating story and the sad ending to this car with a focused Market shrewd business and low overhead they existed far longer than most of their contemporaries and it's kind of sad to see them gone but what I haven't included in this video is the soap opera like story around the man who escaped from zarist Russia and had seemingly endless encounters with the law multiple SEC investigations antitrust lawsuits from owning both the taxi companies and the manufacturers of the cabs even to the end when the then CEO David marking fell victim to Bernie Madoff in his Ponzi scheme and his name appeared five times in the list of victims unfortunately most of these cars were worked hard and retired when there was nothing left to give so the few exist for collectors but boy what I like to drive one thanks for watching and thanks to my patreon supporters be sure to check out the bonus episode I'm going to do where I talk about the four failed attempts to replace that last Checker model some of which were truly hair brained thanks for being here guys

Channel: All Cars with Jon

Views: 279,327

Keywords: car, cars, automobiles, trucks, All Cars, checker, checker taxi, checker motors, checker history, morris markin, new york city, taxi cab, taxi (transit vehicle type)

Id: 7z79NIbsU5s

Length: 17min 43sec (1063 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 24 2022