TABLE OF CONTENTS
i. Welcome!
ii. Foreword
iii. Introduction
1.The Origins of the Limousine
2. The Traditions of Riding in
the Back Seat
3. Chauffeurs
4. The Coachbuilders
5. The Factory Limousines
6. The
Commercial Limousine Operators
7. Getting
What You Want -- Buying a Limousine
8. The
Limousine -- Inside and Out
9. Building
a Stretch Limousine
10. Exotic
Limousines
11. The
Classics and the Not So Classic: Celebs, High Rollers and Their Limousines
12. Presidential
Rides
13. Fit
for a King -- Royal Limousines
14. Limousine
Etiquette and How to Enjoy Riding in the Back Seat
15. The
Cultured Limousine
16. Glossary
(definitions as seen from the
back seat of a limousine)
Photo Gallery
1. Welcome
2. Back Seat Riding
3. Cadillac Pages
4. Lincoln Pages
5. Lehmann-Peterson Pages
6. Limousines Pages
7. Reader Pages
See also:
Chauffeur and
Passenger stories
Used by permission Society of Automotive Engineers,
SAE Press, Copyright 2002 www.sae.org and by private
contributors, as noted.
Back to Front
Copyright 2002
by
Michael L. Bromley
All Rights Reserved |
|
PRESIDENTIAL
RIDES
The first White House Limousines, 1909
In 1899, William McKinley (1897-1901) became
one of the first world leaders to ride a
motor car, a Locomobile steam carriage driven by its inventor Freeland O. Stanley. Like
subsequent White House automobile suppliers, Locomobile was plenty glad that folks
knew the President rode in its car. Since that time, Presidential vehicles have gone
from the horseless carriage to the most expensive and technically advanced
automobiles ever built that are today's Presidential limousines. The limousine
has ever played a crucial role in the life of the President.
Politics have always measured the style of
presidential vehicles, and, until
the post-Kennedy days of hyper-security, each president came to his carriage or car
by way of personal and political choice. The stately and self-conscious George
Washington rejected one carriage because it was "too old fashioned and uncouth."
Washington's official entrance was by six-horse team and beautifully crafted,
monogrammed carriage. Only the exalted Washington could get away with that.
His successor, John Adams, himself one of the more aristocratic of American
presidents, denied his wife an expensive coach because he deemed it a
pretentious symbol of the European order. Onward through Van Buren's
imported victoria, Fillmore's silk and silver-adorned clarence, to McKinley's
$5,000 brougham, Presidents have always had a good ride.
William Howard Taft
(1909-1913) came to high office a convinced motorist.
The automotive press was ecstatic, for Taft’s predecessor, Theodore Roosevelt
(1901-1909), had shunned motor cars as un-democratic. While McKinley’s
embracement came before the technology was proven useful, at best, Roosevelt’s
seven year avoidance of them didn’t help. Instead, he presided over the
politicalization
of the automobile. With horse apologists damning the machines, populists damning the
owners, and Roosevelt shunning both, motorists were on their own, especially in
politics. Not that limousine-riding millionaires running down children was defensible,
but Roosevelt did nothing either way. Nevertheless, the motor wasn’t to be
arrested. And William Howard Taft wasn’t to be kept out of one.
Taft's Garage
White steamer, Baker electric, Pierce-Arrow 36 H.P. landaulet,
Pierce-Arrow 48 H.P. limousine, all 1909
(Courtesy William Howard Taft Site, National Park
Service, Cincinatti, OH)
(For more, go to the
William
Howard Taft Pages)
President Hoover's V-16 Cadillac
(Courtesy Library of Congress)
i
President Johnson's new Lincoln...
(Courtesy Lyndon Johnson Library)
Ronald Reagan in the most important limousine in the world...
Number One
(Courtesy Secret Service)
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