Checker cars for sale

Overview

Checker built taxis, and it built them so single-mindedly that its main model stayed in production essentially unchanged for over twenty years. The Marathon is the yellow cab of every mid-century New York film.

History

Morris Markin founded the Checker Cab Manufacturing Company in 1922 by merging Commonwealth Motors with his own body works, moving to Kalamazoo, Michigan in 1923. Markin also bought taxi operators — Checker Taxi and the Yellow Cab Company — creating a captive market for his own vehicles.

The A11 taxi and A12 Marathon arrived in 1961 and barely changed after that, running Chevrolet engines behind quad headlamps and famously wide rear doors, big seats and jump seats. By the 1970s the design was several automotive generations old. The last car was built in July 1982, defeated by worn-out body dies and the impossibility of competing with the Big Three. The company subcontracted for GM and Chrysler until Chapter 11 in January 2009 and closure in January 2010.