Ok, so there’s no real legend, but it is legendary among plastic model aficionados. The Tijuana Taxi was one of the wildest creations to come out of the golden age of custom “show rod” model kits. Designed by legendary artist and model-car designer Tom Daniel for Monogram, the 1/24-scale kit debuted in 1969, reportedly inspired by Daniel’s youthful trips from Los Angeles to Tijuana. Rather than reproducing an actual automobile, Daniel dreamed up a completely outrageous Mexican taxi hot rod, packing a huge exposed Pontiac engine, chrome hardware, drag slicks, an elaborate passenger compartment, exterior seats, luggage, and even a chicken coop on the roof.
A 1969 Monogram advertisement sold the kit for just $2 and jokingly divided its accommodations into fancy interior seating for first-class passengers, fender seats for second class, and rooftop seating for third class.
The Tijuana Taxi perfectly captured the anything-goes spirit of late-’60s model building, when fantasy rods could be stranger, louder, and more exaggerated than anything cruising the street. Its colorful Tom Daniel box art was nearly as memorable as the model itself, helping turn the kit into a favorite among kids and, decades later, collectors of vintage show rods.
The original tooling was eventually lost, but the model proved popular enough that new tooling was created and the Tijuana Taxi returned as a Revell-Monogram reissue in 2009—complete with the amusingly advertised “new and improved” chicken for its rooftop cage. More than half a century after its debut, the Tijuana Taxi remains a wonderfully ridiculous artifact from an era when building a model car didn’t necessarily mean building something that could ever have existed in the real world.
