Checkers 4 Failed Attempts to Replace Their Iconic Cab

when the final Checker rolled off the assembly line in 1982 the car was about 20 years old and it begs the question of why did Checkers stop production of cars instead of Designing a new one in fact this car dates back almost to clay models in the 50s so it can be argued with the chassis combinations and everything else that this actually dates back about 25 years and what's fascinating is that Checker if you look at their 60-ish year history they updated almost every three years a new car so why didn't they ever come up with a replacement for that iconic Checker Cab well actually there were four attempts and I've got some thoughts on why they didn't welcome back to all cars y'all I am John and this is part two this is a follow-up video to my history of Checker be sure to check that out first if you haven't done it but this is kind of a supplement of why did Checker get themselves into this position of just stopping production again starting back in about 1922 they seemed to have a constant stream of models coming out until about 1962. now they had a chassis and they had some design but this really kind of started to settle in on what we know as the iconic Checker and they kept it until 1982 with a lot of updates to safety and Emissions for example but then it just kind of faded away and it's kind of sad and I found myself wondering why well it turns out there were four attempts in the 70s early 80s to replace the Checker Cab now part of the thing here is let's keep in mind that the founder of Checker Motors the well the guy who put it together Morris Morgan he passed away in 1970 so if we trace this a11 Checker back to about 1962 something like that it was about eight years old when he passed away and so I do think that part of what happened here was a a lack of Vision on the the part of the leadership well honor about the 74-ish the early 70s there was a thought a proposal put to Checker by a steel and prototype Builder called autodynamics for Madison Heights and what they did is they came up with what they called the Galva now this is actually referencing the use of galvanized steel and what they were trying to do is use the most modern steel and the most modern tooling reduce the amount of tooling reduce the complexity of assembling a brand new car and they proposed a joint venture to come up with something that would become the next Checker unfortunately it never got further than the drawing board so we don't know really too much about it so about three years later in 1977 there was a much more serious proposal put forth now retired GM president Ed Cole and very very successful very wealthy auto dealer Victor potomkin I hope I pronounced that correctly came together and they bought into Checker and they were trying to set coal up as the president and what they were going to do was Volkswagen had recently completed their Westmoreland plant in Philadelphia to build the rabbit they were going to build to buy partially completed rabbits ship them to the Checker facility cut them in half so stretch them 21 inches raise the roof and then fit them out as taxis again I don't know why anybody would think this is a good idea but they actually took this quite far down the line they actually did do a test mule they loaded it up with 500 pounds of sand and they sent it to Chicago drove it to Chicago and then sent it on a test Loop and well it was almost immediately canceled the problem is couple of things first off is they were adding weight to it so they knew they were going to have to replace the Volkswagen engine which included looking at engines from Perkins Mitsubishi or an Oldsmobile diesel because we know every story with an Oldsmobile diesels it seems to end up well also and most tragically Ed Cole died in a plane crash and so that kind of just scolded everything and it's really interesting that just as a side note of this project is they were taking this rabbit and stretching it they were going to redo the rear seating so you had seating facing each other like on a train it's interesting that in a couple of instances here they actually went back to proposals they had after World War II and rejected and here they were trying to do it again so after this failure things really got quiet for about another three years or so until 1980 where Checker hatched the plan to use the GM x-body platform as the basis for their next taxi now the U.S had been through two different gas crises and the current Checker was big heavy slow very inefficient they were looking to modernize it and getting a little bit more serious about it now General Motors and Checker had had a relationship for decades with Checker using more and more of GM's Parts like their Chevy engines or their steering columns or various switch gears and things like that so there's a relationship here automatically between these companies and they felt that the X body which was a Thoroughly Modern unibody front-wheel drive platform would be a great place to start and the general idea was to take the X body and treat it very much like they did the Volkswagen project it's interesting in both of these cases that Checker had evaluated front-wheel drive back after World War II and rejected it for higher manufacturing costs and higher maintenance costs on the taxicab operators the big problem with this plan was GM and Fisher body could not commit to the timeline the Checker required for the bodies to be provided to them I actually think if they could have done that this would have moved forward but GM had the x-body plan being ended in 1985 so if it's 1980 and it would have taken two or so years to develop the new taxis they didn't want a three-year time frame after this massive investment to have to do something different again so because GM wouldn't commit to providing the bodies they decided to cancel this project too now the last one the fourth one is actually called the Galva 2 because this is actually Checker and Auto Dynamics getting together again to have a discussion about replacing the cab and this actually took the x-body program and almost flipped it on its head it's almost a 180 of it what they did is they wanted to use Fisher for providing various components but not use them for the bodies that Checker would actually develop their own Body and Frame so they actually would go away from unibody in this case but be able to get the components from Fisher and from GM they really worked on making this simple to maintain and simple to produce again reducing tooling as much as possible making this as simple to produce as possible including bolt-on fenders and bolt-on door panels including looking at moving to plastic panels both for the doors and the fenders much like they used on Saturns later on it's interesting note that at the time this polymers or different Plastics that they would have used had a very slow construction time but that didn't matter when you've got a low volume manufacturer so they could use it and it made it easier also you can imagine in day-to-day traffic driving where things might ding into your car of helping them not be dented it's it was brilliant from that perspective they also designed a fully independent rear suspension and they used a firestone designed marshmallow rear suspension which is essentially a fiber reinforced rubber insert which is pretty cool sounds easy simple to maintaining simple to replace now they actually took the development of this quite far down the road they actually had clay models they had what's called a seating Buck actually to see how the seating was going to fit they were at the point of ordering tooling and dyes to be produced they were that far along in the engineering and they were planning on multiple different wheelbases they were planning on 109 inch for six passengers 122 for eight passengers and 128 for seating nine and a raised roof option for paratransport with wheelchair capabilities coming out the side they were very far along to making this real but what happened is is that at the beginning of the 80s you had a little bit of a downturn and generally things were pretty tight Checker was already producing as a third-party supplier various suspension chassis and components and stampings for various models not only General Motors but others and they were at across roads of do they make a millions of dollars investment into a new car or do they make the investment and expand their third party business and ultimately they decided to expand their third party business and that's where they canceled the production of the Checker Cab and so why did this all happen this way with a company that was Reinventing itself Reinventing its car every few years it seemed for so long why did they suddenly hit a point where they sat for 20 to 25 years and just updated what they had and I think it's a couple of things with Morris dying in 1970 the new leadership came in and they were quite young as a matter of fact and so I think you have a situation where two things were happening the first is that they were pleasantly profitable and so there wasn't a lot of impetus for them to go shake the tree why make a big investment if you can just keep doing what you're doing and make the same amount of money off of it so there was probably some really just fat dumb and happy but the second thing is is that means there was a lack of leadership they didn't push to be the best they didn't push to come out with that next generation and honestly if you look at these four options of taking other people's cars and lengthening them or buying other components and maybe designing your own and that one finally got as far along as it did they had no real vision for what the next generation of Taxi was going to be that at this time during the 70s the manufacturer excuse me taxi companies were moving greater towards using Chevys and Fords and Dodges and everything else instead of the Checker Taxi because they were more efficient even if they weren't purposefully designed as a taxi so I think there was a severe lack of what is next for us and I hate to say it the answer was going to come a couple years later with the minivan if they could have come up with something that was more like the minivan and more rugged for day-to-day taxi driving use they would have had an absolute hit on their hands but alas they did not so that's the story it seems like they let it drift on for 25 years and then just gave up but they're actually released four attempts each one's a little bit more crazy than the previous one in a lot of ways but if you've ever wondered why it died and why they didn't try to replace it that's the answer thanks for being here guys I really appreciate it let me know if you have any questions below

Channel: All Cars with Jon

Views: 81,161

Keywords: car, cars, automobiles, trucks, All Cars, checker, checker cab, checker motors

Id: 5zHGVo3tsWA

Length: 12min 2sec (722 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 24 2022