By surfing the Net I found the original A-11 Checker taxi in "immaculate condition" built in 1976 with a "juvenile" 100 000 kilometers on the clock. The reason: The car was ordered from the Checker factory in Kalamazoo, Michigan as a cab, though not by a cabby but by the DEA, who used the taxi as an unsuspicious undercover police car to track and hunt down drug dealers in the Big Apple. Which is the reason for the powerful and rather enjoyable 5,7-litre V 8 Chevy with around 250 horse powers, that under normal circumstances was never used in taxis, but only on request in the Marathons. Or to put it in Elwood Blues’ words:" It’s got a cop motor, cop tyres, cop suspension, cop shocks".

Driving a Checker is experiencing a truck, a street cruiser and a limousine, all at the same time. It is surprisingly comfortable and fast, despite the weight.

In October 1999 I travelled in the car from Manhattan to Miami, where I stored it for a couple of months. It was the first time, that the taxicab was in a position to breathe something other then polluted downtown air. The highlights of the first trip in October 1999 were the magnificient Skyline Drive in Virginia and the shapely mega-babes in Daytona and Miami Beach. I decided to do the trip first and restore the car afterwards. Whatever would break during the journey I would fix on the spot. During the first couple of hundred miles I therefore changed front bushings, tyres, shocks, brake pads, spark plugs, oils and filters. Unfortunately I didn’t stay anywhere long enough to fix the leak in the air condition system and subsequently had to revert to the good old 460 aircon – four windows open and 60 miles per hour.

During the second leg of the trip in April/May 2000 the cab experienced the tropical Florida Keys, jazzy New Orleans, the seemingly endless mountain deserts of the Big Bend area in Texas and the Indian pueblos of New Mexico, again with 460 air condition.