Checker Marathon

In short

• Built in Kalamazoo from September 1960 (model year 1961) to 1982; the last car left the plant on 12 July 1982.
• Four-door sedan and station wagon on a 120 in (3,048 mm) wheelbase; the Town Custom limousine used 129 in (3,277 mm).
• Engines: a Continental 3.7-litre six at first, then Chevrolet sixes, a V6 and V8s; the 1969 Chevrolet L-48 350 V8 gave 224 kW (300 hp gross).
• Checker sold most cars to fleets; the last New York Checker cab retired in July 1999 after nearly one million miles.

Checker Marathon at a glance

Morris Markin and the Kalamazoo cab works

Commonwealth Motors had introduced its Mogul Taxi in 1919 and went bankrupt in 1921, when Markin took over its assets. Through the 1920s he also bought up Checker Taxi, a Chicago cab operator. After buying Yellow Cab in 1929, he merged the two fleets into the Parmelee Transportation Company. Markin is credited with the checkerboard trim along the beltline that gave the cars their look. The company promoted its cabs as able to run 200,000 miles.

Checker named its models with letters and numbers. The A2 arrived on 15 December 1946. The A3 of August 1947 was the first Checker with a trunk and was also sold to the public. The boxy A8 of 1956–1958 gave the Marathon most of its chassis and body, as German Wikipedia notes. In 1960 the A10 Superba became Checker's first model aimed at private buyers.

Development and production history

The Marathon appeared in September 1960 next to the Superba Custom, which it gradually replaced, and it had a better-trimmed interior. It kept the Superba's A10 body code, while the taxi version carried A9. A wider grille and moved parking lamps told the two apart. A 1963 facelift brought new codes: A11 for taxis and A12 for private cars. That year Checker also added the Marathon Town Custom limousine, an eight-seater on a 129 in wheelbase, coded A19E and later A12E.

Checker had no nationwide dealer network, so most cars went to fleet buyers. In 1962 the company built more than 8,000 vehicles, most of them taxis. Sales to private buyers ran at about 1,000 a year from 1960 to 1968 and fell to 760 in 1969. In 1977 Ed Cole, a retired president of General Motors, and Victor Potamkin bought into Checker. Cole died in a plane crash in May 1977, and the plan for a Volkswagen-based taxi died with him.

Design and engineering

The Marathon used a box-section frame with cross members. At the front it had independent unequal-length wishbones, coil springs and an anti-roll bar. A live axle on semi-elliptic leaf springs sat at the rear. The brakes were dual-circuit with servo assistance, discs at the front and self-adjusting drums at the rear. The steering was recirculating-ball, with optional power assistance. Reports say the front A-frames could be swapped with those of a 1956 Ford.

Two features suited cab work in particular. The rear quarter panels bolted on, so a damaged one could be replaced instead of repaired. The design also stayed almost unchanged for 21 years, which kept parts simple for fleets. Apart from the 5 mph bumpers of 1974, the changes went under the skin, and the car still met each new federal rule:

• 1964: front lap belts standard; 1966: rear lap belts standard;
• 1967: energy-absorbing steering column and wheel, padded dashboard, recessed knobs and a dual-circuit master cylinder;
• 1968: front shoulder belts for outboard seats; 1969: headrests and side reflectors;
• 1970: round side marker lamps and a locking steering column;
• 1975: catalytic converters, so the car needed unleaded fuel;
• 1978: parallel-action wipers and a Chevrolet-style steering wheel.

The Marathon was 5,200 mm long with the 1974 bumpers. The size comparison tool shows how that sets against a modern saloon.

Engines and drivetrain

The first Marathons used Continental six-cylinder engines of 226 cu in (3.7 litres), in side-valve and overhead-valve form. Chevrolet sixes and small-block V8s replaced them in the mid-1960s. English Wikipedia's text gives 1965 for the change, while its engine table puts the switch in the middle of 1964. Chevrolet's own story is in our history of Chevrolet.

From 1976 the car also took a radiator from the AMC Matador, the TH400 automatic and a Spicer 44 rear axle. Its steering used a rear drag link until 1980. Gearboxes were a three-speed manual or the three-speed TH400 automatic, both shifted from the column.

Aerobus, limousines and other variants

The station wagon faded out early: German Wikipedia records only 23 sold in model year 1974, and it was dropped that autumn. A few projects never reached production. The Ghia Centurion of 1968 was a limousine concept on the A12E chassis, shown in Paris and Turin. The Galva II of 1981 was a front-drive prototype on a stretched GM X platform.

In service: the New York cab and its last years

For decades the Checker was the dominant taxi in New York City. Its size, tough build, unchanging shape and bolt-on rear panels made it a fixture in Manhattan. Police departments used Marathons too, especially in Kalamazoo. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, A12 Marathons with Vatican plates carried the entourage of Pope Paul VI in motorcades. Film-makers still use them for scenes set in New York between the 1960s and the 1980s.

Production ended in 1982 because the Markin family chose to stop building cars instead of meeting labour demands. German Wikipedia adds that one last A12E was built in 1983 for David Markin. From 1983 Checker remanufactured cabs at its Kalamazoo Cab Services division, still doing so in 1997. It then made body stampings for General Motors, Ford and Chrysler for 27 more years. The company filed for bankruptcy in January 2009 and went out of business on 14 January 2010.

The last Checker cab in New York, nicknamed "Janie", retired in July 1999. Its driver, Earl Johnson, had run it since 1978. The car covered nearly one million miles, about 1.6 million km, and needed three new engines.

Preservation and collecting today

There is no single "correct" Marathon, because the car changed under the skin almost every year. For a buyer or restorer, the history above points to a few checks:

• Taxi or private car: the A11 cab and the A12 passenger car share the body, but trim and equipment differ.
• Engine: Continental sixes date from the early years, and later cars carry Chevrolet sixes, a V6, V8s or one of the rare diesels. Engine swaps were common in fleet service.
• Year group: cars from 1974 on have the heavy bumpers, and cars from 1975 on need unleaded fuel.
• Rare bodies: the station wagon, the Town Custom and the Aerobus were built in small numbers; only 23 wagons were sold in model year 1974.

More cars of the period are in the 1960s classics section, and other Checker models are in the Checker catalogue.

Photo gallery