Old School Taxis

Mexico City is full of cars, and surprisingly most of them are pretty modern. They have pretty strict emission laws here and it's eliminated quite a few of the old beaters. VW bugs are the exception though and this is because up until this year they were still making new ones. I'm not talking about those glossy, candyshell, dot com jobs with the flower holders on the dash and all-leather interiors, I'm talking about the old el-cheapo, no frills, Herbie the love bug, stinking roaches in the ashtray kind. Anyway, these things are still really popular here mainly because they used to be the cheapest thing with four wheels you could buy. Most of the taxis are bugs in Mexico City. I'm told they are not practical for the city because they don't drive very smoothly and are always lurching around, but here the equation is: price - old and lurching = tacos for a year. Anyway I like them. I have to admit I never had much of a fondness for Volkswagens because they always seemed expensive to repair and to be constantly breaking down, but here the story is different as they are cheap to buy and apparently cheap to fix too.



This is what the taxis look like.


Here's one in a VW showroom hot off the press.


Here's some VW busses being used as busses.