The last brand that the Cord Corporation owned (albeit for a
very short period of time) is also the one that has lasted the longest. Checker
Cabs are icons of the US industry – everyone knows the image of the Yellow cabs
in New York or any major city.
Checker Motors Corporation was founded in 1922 by Morris
Markin, an immigrant from Russia when he combined several companies including
Commonwealth Motors and Handley-Knight a small manufacturer that had only been
in existence for a couple of years. They were originally based in Joliet,
Illinois.
Markin had gained control of Commonwealth when the owners
defaulted on a $15,000 loan that he had provided – Markin was primarily in the
clothing industry with interests in car body manufacturing.
Commonwealth had a mixed heritage too! As you can imagine in
an industry that had just been born there were hundreds of companies out to
take a slice of the market. One of the many companies that started in 1908 was
created by William Schaum who developed a 2 cylinder car called the Seven
Little Buffaloes – quite why he called it that no one knows! He was based in
New York State and his company became the Deschaum-Hornell Motor car Company.
They then moved to Michigan and developed a model called the Suburban and
renamed themselves the Suburban Car Company. They were then acquired and became
the Palmer Motor Car Company who merged with Partin to become Partin-Palmer
Manufacturing until they moved to Joliet and renamed themselves Commonwealth.
Checker Taxi was a private Chicago based taxi company that
had placed a large order with Commonwealth, so to sort things out, Markin
merged everything together. So, for a while Markin built cabs and had a cab
company using them! He had taken the idea from John Hertz, who had founded the
Yellow Cab Company in 1910 who built and operated his own cars. This lead to a
price war and ultimately Hertz sold out in 1929 and Markin picked up the Yellow
Cab Company but not the manufacturing rights – which went to General Motors.
Hertz had been renting out unused cabs when they weren’t operating and this
lead to the idea of his pure rental company.
The price war got quite vicious and after a personal attack
on Markin, he bought the Dort Automobile factory and relocated Checker to
Kalamazoo in Michigan. The company now produced 4,000 units a year with each
unit selling for about $2,000. The models had 40hp 4 cylinder engines and a 6
was added in 1927. Their models alphabetically named reaching Series “K” by the
end of the 20s.
Checker was also expanding the cab business by setting up
sales outlets and cab companies across the US.
In 1933 Markin sold the business to the Cord Corporation who
continued the build and operate strategy – Auburn had been building competing
taxi models, but as the Cord Corp started to suffer financial strain, Markin
stepped back in and acquired Checker in 1936.
Checker branched into building body shells for Hudson and
other manufacturers including Ford and REO (of Speedwagon fame). Checker also
built some of the prototype Jeeps called the Bantam.
As the cab company grew it started to dwarf the
manufacturing side so in the late 50s, they decided to build passenger cars and
launched the Superba in 1959 and grew this business through the 60s with the
introduction of a second model: the Marathon, to replace the Superba, also
called the A11/A12 for the taxi version. It remained in production for nearly
20 years. The cars were thirsty as they not only used large engines but also
had poor aerodynamics due to being designed for a Lycoming motor. When Lycoming
stopped producing this engine, the Marathon was fitted with a Chevrolet straight
six or a V8 as an option. When Chevrolet stopped production of the 6 during the
late 70s, they switched to a small Chevrolet V6 but the heavy car was still thirsty
so they converted them to run on Propane!
During the early 60s, the New York State Government had
attacked Markin on anti-trust charges because he built and operated cabs and
they didn’t like the monopoly, so Markin branched out and started to sell cab
licences as well.
When Markin died in 1970, his son David took over the
company and in the late 70s, a retired GM executive (Ed Cole – responsible for
the Chevrolet small block V8) bought into Checker to revamp the models by buying US
built VWs, shipping them to Kalamazoo and then lengthening them to suit the
taxi format. Unfortunately he was killed in a plane crash before the plan was
put into place.
Checker stopped building cars in 1982 due to labour
restrictions and the fact that they needed to replace the body dies – they were
so worn after 20 odd years of stamping that the manufacturing process and after
market mechanics had to manually adjust the panels to fit properly!
Today, there are Checker or Yellow Cab companies in many US
cities providing taxi services to the public and now using Ford Crown Victorias
or other models.
As you will have seen in many of my history articles, there
is a lot of co-operation between manufacturers, even though they are competing
as well. It would be interesting to see how many non GM or Chrysler cars use
their 6 or 8 cylinder engines. We would be talking in the 100s I suspect.