Sept 4: What is it?

Ok, so what the heck is this vehicle? Probably the paint colour, fancy wheels and the deluxe background are throwing you a curve. This, my friends, is the MV-1, which some of you might recognize, when you see it in its usual paint scheme and surroundings. You got it, it is a cab, but not just any cab.

The MV-1 was developed for one specific purpose and that was to taxi around folks with disabilities. Yep, this was the first purpose built van made for customers, who were wheelchair bound. Originally set to come out in 2011 (which it kind of did), the company quickly folded, but was then saved (read taken over), by AM General (remember them as the Hummer folks?). Now you are starting to see a few around in taxi cab fleets, doing what they were originally intended to do........

But this is a purpose built taxi, its purpose stated above, but its manufacturer is no fool. Although designed to carry wheelchairs easily, it is also being touted as an all purpose cab, with tons of room for a single passenger or generous room for an entire family (and their dog).

Ever since the "you see it everywhere", Crown Vic........

..........met its demise, the cab companies have been looking for something that, will handle the rough and tough taxi life and be big enough, yet also be small enough to be economical. Now, did you understand that?

Well, this has led to a variety of cars being tried out for the role. Even Nissan has built a cab out of their NV200 van to hopefully take over from the beloved big Ford.......

This one was all set to take over the role in the Big Apple, until something like "rights" got in the way (look it up, since I don't want to bog down this blog with legal details). The taxi companies were looking for something like the iconic, purpose built London cab .........

. Strange looking, but extremely effective in its role of a smaller people mover in a big and very congested city. Squint and you can see from where the MV-1 got its inspiration.

Great idea, but harder to execute than to just imagine. Why? Price, that's why. For a disability type van, the $50-$60k is not at all bad, but as an all around cab price, that is indeed one rich vehicle for fleets, which often number in the hundreds. I live in Toronto and, of course, I see them around here, but they are few and far between. I would imagine that, the companies are only using them to replace the regular vans, which were being modified to carry the disabled.

So that is the MV-1 story in a nutshell (without all the important details, which may interest some, but which I find boring). Is AM General trying hard to market their new car? Well, I haven't seen any ads for them, but I imagine, I'm probably not looking in the right places. One place I did look though, was the Canadian NASCAR series and low and behold, look who sponsors one of the race cars.........

You can't say they are not trying.

Until next time........