Mercedes Taxi Cabs Mauritania Style

Mercedes Benz 190 Taxi Cab - Mauritania style

For a website that is supposed to be all about fast and fetching German machinery, we realise this is about as stupidly random as leftfield gets, but we just had to show you these pretty darn awesome Mercedes machines all the same.

Mauritania isn’t a rich country (actually it’s one of the poorest in Africa), so their ‘cars for the people’ aren’t going to be especially special. But au contraire, they are, in their own special, decrepit, beaten up little way. They’re Mercs for a start (and hence, tenuously, why we can show you them. Ok, not all of them, but the fine Renaults out there we felt needed sharing too), but it’s their dilapidated states that really set them apart. Bouncing about on their springs, dampers long since admitted defeat, passengers bouncing up and down on the creaky springs of the back seat, arses long since admitted defeat, they go about their business at a rate of knots that would stand them in good stead for a duel against a Dakar VW Touareg (incidentally, an attacked on French tourists by Mauritanian terrorists was the catalyst for the ’08 Dakar cancellation), yet they keep going, on and on, no matter how knocked-up and worn-down they get, the Mauritanians stubbornly keeping them trundling.

With emission-lowering policies cropping up all the time (Berlin is banning cars that don’t meet Euro 4 emissions standards imminently; the French government already offers owners money to take their old cars off the road), third world countries like Mauritania can be confident of a lasting supply of old Mercs, from W115s to W201s. Not that they will decommission any of their current fleet, mind…

Related posts:

1. Mercedes 190’s at the Nurburgring 24 Hour

Filed Under: Blog
Tags: 190, C-Class, E-Class, Mercedes Benz, Taxi, Travel, W115, W123, W124, W201