While it might look like a London Cab, in actuality, today’s Nice Price or No Dice PT Cruiser is one of the lowest-mileage examples of Chrysler’s compact you can find today. Let’s see if it’s priced to leave the meter running.
Indiana Jones famously robbed graves, looted historical sites, and stole antiquities from their rightful owners, all because, in his mind, they “belong in a museum.” When you think about it, Indy was kind of a dick in that way. According to its ad, the 1993 Toyota Sera we looked at yesterday was once displayed in a museum. That explains its excellent presentation and almost-new condition. It likely made for a great display piece, as it features trick butterfly doors and a quirky sound system. Sadly for the seller, however, its museum-level price tag of $19,500 wasn’t something most of us found worth contemplating. Ultimately, that failed to find favor, dooming the Sera to a hefty 80% No Dice loss.
Para-cute
There is perhaps no more iconic connection between city and car than that of the traditional London Cab and the English Capitol for which it’s named. It should be pointed out at the outset of our discussion that the car we’re considering today is not a London Cab but a 2001 Chrysler PT Cruiser that has been dressed in a bowler hat and monocle to trick the eye into thinking we’ve been unexpectedly whisked off to the Town on the Thames.
This is one of 20 PT Cruisers that were converted to London Taxi lookalikes for a San Francisco-based boutique package delivery company called Parachute. According to an SFGate article from the time, these cost around $30,000 each, a total that included the car’s $16,000 drive-off cost, something like $3,000 to $4,000 to do the conversion, and then about $10,000 more to fit them with a GPS tracker and wireless modem for driver communications. This was, after all, the pre-iPhone era. Parachute also cut a deal with the maker of the actual London Cab, Manganese Bronze Holding Plc, to pay the London-based company $2 million for the rights to use the cab’s signature look
Under the skin
According to the Bureau of Labor and Statistics, over 20% of new business startups fail within the first year of operation, and fully half go under within five years. Parachute was one of those unlucky statistics and failed within its first couple of years, leaving a number of these funky delivery vehicles—still bearing their business branding on the doors—for the market to make what it would of them. That makes for a pretty interesting backstory and a fairly unique (there are 20 of them) car to have.
Fortunately, the disguise goes only skin deep, so everything else about this PT Cruiser is perfectly stock and, hence, reasonably easy to maintain. That goes for the drivetrain, which remains the 2.4-liter 16-valve four-cylinder engine producing 150 horsepower and 162 pound-feet of torque, paired with a four-speed automatic transmission driving the front wheels. Per its ad, all the fluids have been changed, and the car is said to run “like a new car.”
Also, underused
It is, in fact, almost a new car, as the ad touts that this cab-converted PT only has 4,800 miles on the clock. Apparently, this car was not used extensively for its intended task but instead spent the last quarter century in storage while being regularly started and refreshed as needed over that time.
Along with the cab conversion and door branding, this car still has the GPS and modem thing in the cabin. Aside from those intrusive and humorously quaint pieces of technology, everything else is stock, and the gray mouse-fur upholstery and penny-pinching plastics all appear to be in good shape. The car has A/C, plus power windows and locks, so it’s not as parsimoniously equipped as a real London Cab. Additionally, the steering wheel is located on the right side—which is the left side—for the U.S. market. On the exterior, the only issue evident is a bent front license plate. The rest of the bodywork and paint look to be in fantastic condition.
Cruising to victory?
Now, to be fair, the PT Cruiser is generally not everyone’s favorite car. These were hugely popular when they were new, but for some reason, they have since developed a negative reputation. Hopefully, we can get over that and judge this fun and funky London Taxi-aping edition on its own merits. It does, after all, have a cheeky look and a cool backstory of having survived a business failure. And it only has 4,800 miles!
The asking price is $8,000, which the seller seems to think accurately reflects the car’s unique nature and present condition, balanced against the fact that, at the end of the day, it’s a PT Cruiser.
What do we think about that? Is this converted Cruiser worth that $8,000 asking as it sits? Or is that too much to fake it ’til we make it?
You decide!
Nice Price or No Dice:
San Francisco Bay Area, California, Craigslist, or go here if the ad disappears.
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