I would like to open a topic as a collection of Mercedes taxicabs around the world. Here are a couple recorded in my European trips:


Mercedes E220 diesel wagon, in rural Spain. 40mpg all day long!



Latest model Mercedes E220 sedan in Schipol airport, Netherlands.

Feel free to add to the pile, especially fintails and W115/W123 cars!

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[GONE] - 1995 Mercedes E300 Diesel - 130k miles - Smoke Silver (702) over Mushroom leather (265) - Bladder blasting, coast-to-coast work machine.

Hi Delibes, whats going on?

I rode in plenty of taxi MBs during my Europe trip in 2010.

Stuttgart:



Nice, France



Monte Carlo (shortly after the Grand Prix)

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1985 500SL Euro w/ AMG bits 130k
1984 300SD Turbodiesel 192k
1980 240D Stick China 188k
2001 CLK55 AMG 101k
2007 S600 Biturbo 149k Overheated Project, IT'S ALIVE!!!

I rode in a few in russia but they were 123's or 124's of doubtful origins. I never thought to take pictures. I did save the ticket stub of the Aeroflot (aka: aeroflop or aeroplop if you're old enough to remember the cold war.)

I rode in them in East Africa, spring of 1986. Mostly 240d's iirc. The only taxis were W123s and Peugots. No pics however.

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'07 Yukon 2500
'13 Subaru Outback 3.6R
'13 Orbea Carpe 9-speed

Currently Benzless
Formerly: 300TD, S600, E55, 560SEL

---= The forest breathes, listen.
-Native American elder

W211 E220 CDI (with CLK wheels!) in Singapore.



Toyota Comfort is far roomier.

MB taxi drivers are more likely to speak English.

Sixto
87 300D

New York apparently has a few oddballs, though as far as German cars, the Jetta diesels are much more common.

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Nice thread!

Actually those aren't CLK wheels. I was recently in Singapore (yesterday ) and got close to one of those taxis. The design is slightly different than the CLK lightweights. Of course I didn't have the chance to weigh them and check if they're just as light.

Those taxis are real workhorses. The car that picked us up from the airport was a 5-year old Hyundai Sonata, diesel (CRDI) that logged 787k km already!

Spoke to the driver, who looked like Jean Reno with an Indian accent, and he said he's been driving it daily since. Weird having to sit on the front left seat, with no steering wheel in front

That Toyota Comfort was pretty roomy, it was our ride back to the airport (Changi airport was very nice, by the way). Our taxi was also a diesel. The E-class was too expensive

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My wife and I just watched the movie "Unknown" with Liam Neeson. It was a good movie, but I digress. It's filmed in Berlin, and MB taxis abound in the movie. The key event in the beginning of the movie involves one, and then later in the movie we see our star in a W124 taxi. I said to my wife "Mark my words, that car is going to get destroyed" because there are no 124's in taxi service any more in a big city like Berlin, and I knew that to save a few bucks the movie company would use a beater rather than spend the money for a new taxi and ruin it.

Sure enough, that car gets totally trashed. I bet they used 3 or 4 to shoot the chase. For us 124 guys, it was good to see the old girl, but hard to see it get trashed...

Rgds,
Chris W.
'95 E300D german taxi style with 358K miles, not kilometers

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Objects in closer are mirror than they appear.

attached picture taken November 2011

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"If women are so bloody perfect at multitasking how come they can't have a headache and sex at the same time?"
Billy Connolly

OK you got me - I'll change that to say "There are very few 124's left in taxi service in a big city like Berlin".

Rgds,
Chris W.
'95 E300D, 358K

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Objects in closer are mirror than they appear.

When I lived in Jordan in 1993, they had a huge tax on new cars. I guess that the only benefit of this is that old cars which would have long been scrapped were still valuable and well maintained.

The most common car was Mercedes Benz, mostly from the 70's and 80's (W115, W123, W116 and W126 which are the ones that i'm most fond of).

The taxi's were W115 and W123 and they also had something called a "service" which is basically a taxi that follows a set route. You share it with other people who jump in and out along the route. The ride cost about 15 cents and the majority of them were W110 190's.

They also had a similar service that would ride from Amman to Damascus or Beirut for about $20 bucks, which was a a W115 or W123 lang.

I heard that these cars for the most part have disappeared. What a shame.

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With best regards

Al

saw this kind of thing about a dozen years ago in Copenhagen:





airport taxi rank...



Old fleet of beloved taxicabs in Morocco.




I remember seeing a brand new maroon w210 taxi on the island of Aruba back in 1998. It was striking because it had a full Lorinser body kit and wheels on it.

About a year or two ago I spoke to a man who lived on Aruba, and told me he not only knew the car I was talking about, but even personally knew the man that owned it. It has since been replaced - he told me.. I wish I had a picture of it as I saw it. It was so memorable and iconic.

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1991 560 SEC AMG, 199k <---- 300 hp 10:1 ECE euro HV ...

1995 E 420, 170k "The Red Plum" (sold)

2015 BMW 535i xdrive awd Stage 1 DINAN, 6k, <----364 hp

1967 Mercury Cougar, 49k

2013 Jaguar XF, 20k <----340 hp Supercharged, All Wheel Drive (sold)

I remember an Arab fellow telling me that the reason you see so many Mercedes in the Middle East is that every other brand of car is beat to death on the roads in the countryside. But Mercedes were built to take it.

And I think he is right since Mercedes made a decision to go for the Taxi market back in the early 70's. Noticing that 114's were seeing a lot of Taxi use they decided to double the number of welds in the 115 in order to just make the whole body stronger. It worked!

There was a 'Taxi' service in Dallas/Fort Worth that used Dodge vans to run folks to and from the airport. They would drive them 250,000 miles, replace the engine, and then run them another 250,000 miles. These are the same intervals Mercedes recommends for their cars in Taxi service, and they used to tell you the chassis was good for 1,000,000 miles.

I grew up in Athens, Greece back in theate seventies/ early eighties. W123 Diesel taxis ruled the streets. I remember a W115 220D LWB taxi in Siciliy in the late nineties.