By Brian Lohnes

BangShift.com

Over the last year or so, we’ve not only been introduced to the coolness that is an airport limo, we’ve also begun to really dig them. We got tipped off to this totally neato 1973 Checker model and we want to justify the purchase to our significant other. Anyone got any good reasoning in their back pocket?

This particular one needs brake work, but that should be no sweat. Checkers were known for lots of stuff but the high points were a lack of styling changes (we think they look awesome, who wouldn’t want to buy a 1950s look car in the 1970s?) and their near indestructible nature.

The reason that these cars became famous for being taxi cabs was not for their comfy interiors, it was because they would run for ages with minimal maintenance and upkeep. The company ran its own motors for a while but we’re close to 100% certain this car, being made in 1973, would be powered by a small block chevy.

You and 12 of your friends could roll in style with this car. We call shotgun! Thanks to BangShift.com member IRONHEAD for the tip! Check out the 1973 Checker Aerobus 8-door Limo on eBay!

By Dan Strohl

Hemmings

In our recent post on Checker dealerships, frequent commenter Errcoman informed us that Checker offered its cars in police trim as well as taxi trim. Reader Gene Herman also sent us a scan of a 1964 or 1965 Checker brochure that offered a police package Checker. Though, as with most other Checker products, one could order a Checker cop car pretty much any way one wanted. To confirm this, we went to John Weinhoeft, who pointed us to a few recent articles in the Checkerboard News about Checkers as cop cars, as well as this photo of Checker collector Ben Merkel’s Checker cop car, which originally patrolled Key West, Florida. Continue reading at Hemmings.

The Checker has always been one of my favorite workhorses, and here’s one you can run all year long without breaking the bank. Propane power is already extensively used in fleet vehicles in Canada and elsewhere—there’s been interest in this propane-fueled Checker from as far away as Germany—but it hasn’t caught on as well in the US, though propane-conversion services are plentiful. Propane, a byproduct of fuel refining, is cheaper per gallon than gas and produces fewer emissions; and you fill up your tanks at the local hardware or farm store instead of at the pump. Some nice solid brush-guards front and rear might help prevent a fireball in the event of a collision, though I’m sure any propane devotee would tell me that such fears are unfounded. Check it out on eBay!

This isn’t some weird one-off or homemade limo conversion. The Checker Aerobus was a specialty vehicle manufactured in limited numbers by the same company that made all those cool taxicabs up until 1982. The Aerobus had a sumptuous interior, could comfortably seat twelve, and had a cage in the rear to protect the windows from heavy luggage. They were primarily used as airport limousines, though a sub-model called the Convoy that was designed as a prison transporter (cool!) was slated for production but never manufactured. Checker produced at most a couple hundred Aerobuses a year between 1962 and 1974, and then a few dozen of the experimental sedan-body models until ’77. Even regular Checkers are now rare enough—I don’t like to think about what must’ve happened to all those poor old retired taxis—but the Aerobus is something that you might glimpse at most once or twice in a lifetime. Let us know if one turns up in your neighborhood or junkyard!