Since that moment the thought of owning a Checker never slipped my mind. It didn't cause sleepless nights, but sometimes a dark-red Checker in a limo-version was parked at the Lairessestraat in the south of Amsterdam. Every time I spotted the car, I parked my taxi and had a look again. At a certain moment there was something new in the Amsterdam taxi world. Hans, owner/driver of taxi 635 bought a Ferrari-red Checker and started using it as a streetcab. When I saw him at the taxistand at Rembrandtsplein I congratulated him of course, but inside a nasty jealous feeling was burning: I wanted to be the one that ran a Checkercab, and I wanted to be the one that was showing off! In the summer of '99 a Checker was parked for months on the Apollolaan in Amsterdam. It was a beige limo-version with a brown skai roof, and again I walked around the vehicle for probably several miles. Basically I already made up my mind to own a Checker a long time before, but if there was any doubt, it was gone that summer. Business wise I thought that it was time for something new too. The new taxi-regulations that didn't allow taxicabs to be older than 6 years bothered me a lot (that DID cause some sleep-less nights) and although I used to own a tremendous variety of US-cars, and was doing my taxi-business with US-cars, I was still going for a fifties styled gas-guzzler. Due to the new taxi-regulations it was impossible to run my taxi with a car like that, but the Amsterdam taxi-central did a few rides every now and then with old London blackcabs. Not for daily use of course, it was more of a promotion thing. It brought me to the following conclusion: If blackcabs are allowed that way, it should possible to run a yellow Checkercab like that too. To my surprise, the big heads of TCA were very enthusiastic. Not that I really needed their approval, But I wanted to stay a member of TCA and I wasn't in the mood for an endless discussion with them.