Let's Dance. < Bonham "Rock and Roll" drum solo >
It's hard to imagine any motorcade procession where this would be needed.
I dunno. The front end looks kinda goony.
Maybe I just need to turn up the Led Zeppelin....
The front end is horrible. It is completely out of proportion with the rest of the car.
THIS is a limo styling cue.
Where George and Laura can crank up Kid Rock and kick back and laugh.
I'd have gone with a Hummer...
That Caddy is as ugly as unconfessed sin. They should get a REAL Caddy Limo, like this: http://www.avonhill.com/thumbnails/classic/1956_Cadillac_limo.jpeg
Thing looks like parts from 4 different cars glued together
I know it's not feasible anymore, but I do miss the "open limo" of years past. I remember when Pres Nixon came to our town in Mamaroneck...it was so much more exciting to see your president in an open car.
He always wants me to drive whenever we take a trip in his car. He's very much a Caddy loyalist, so to keep him happy I always remark how nice his car drives and rides whenever I drive it. Actually, I would rather drive my little Nissan Altima if the road is curvy, but of course his Caddy does ride much better on rough roads and it's power is impressive.
The bad part of going anywhere in his car is that my when we get home my wife is always dissatisfied with our little plebian Altima with it's cloth upholstery and manually adjusted seats. My retirement income level doesn't even come close to allowing me to own a late model Caddy, but even if it did I wouldn't be driving one unless there were no Lexus or Infinity available.
I once got a free upgrade to an an Infinity Q45 from a car rental agency and drove it on a fairly long road trip. Wow, what a car. Not only did it have every luxury feature imaginable it handled curves much better than any other big sedan I have ever driven, and the darn thing would pin me to the back of the seat whenever I punched the go pedal. I have not driven the big Lexus, but from what I have read it's at least the equal of the Q45.
No, I don't sell Nissan or Toyota products or own any of their stock, I just like the cars and the fact that they seem to run forever with very little maintenance cost.
I think on this presidential limo version you can see where all the armor has made the body super bulky like around the windows and windshield, like someone wearing what would be a nice suit, but with 5 wool sweaters on underneath bulking it up out of proportion.
WHoever made the comment earlier about "the front looks like a Cavalier". I almost fell out of the chair laughing for some reason, that just struck me as funny. And I drive a Cavalier and this front end looks nothing like mine, but I can see it looks a bit like a late 80's Cavs.
This has the potential to be a not too bad car, but not what I would pick as my first choice.
Bones
Teddy Roosevelt was the first president to ride in car, a Columbia Electric Victoria in 1902 and was the first president to own a car as well.Roosevelt was not the first President to ride in an automobile. William McKinley was, and he did it at least twice as President, once in Washington, and once in Ohio, in 1899-1900. Roosevelt did take a ride in a Columbia during a parade in 1902. Not until May of 1905 did he use an automobile in Washington, and only briefly. He rarely used automobiles after that, especially not in Washington. His dislike for the technology was known by Americans and accepted as normal.
The First President to officially purchase an automobile was William Howard Taft. Taft loved cars and hated demagoguery, which was behind Roosevelt's avoidance of automobiles. Roosevelt did not want to be associated with what were considered "rich men's toys." Even after Roosevelt bought a car for his home in Long Island, in 1910, he disliked the technology. He could never see its importance, and he loathed its associations with industrialism and social change.
Taft negotiated with Congress to purchase two White House autos to be available the day of his inauguration. His very public endorsement of the technology, by example and in his rhetoric, led to an explosion in automobile use and purchase. Not even Henry Ford, who had the best selling car since 1906 (Model N, then the T in 1909), could keep up with the growth of the industry as a whole, which more than doubled in 1909. That is to say, the growth in the industry cannot be explained by the Model T. It was Taft's forceful promotion of the automobile that brought the nation to it.
I put a web slide show on this from a paper I gave last year that tells the story of the politics of the early motor age:
Early Automobiles & Airplanes: The Cultural LagFor a couple anecdotes about Taft and his cars, see:
The Taft Pages: Autos
The reason I fight to tell this story is not just because, as my father tells me, the world is less imperfect when an untruth is corrected. I want people to understand the dangers of populist, demagogic politics. The anti-automobile rhetoric and example of Teddy Roosevelt hurt America and greatly delayed the coming of one of the greatest advances in human history. Yes, the automobile did come to America. No, it was not because of Henry Ford. The way the automobile came to America was defined more than any others by Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft.
Taft's White House Autos (1909)
I fell into this study while writing a book on the history of the limousine. I got to wondering why this fat dumb guy Taft used autos and the supposedly modernist Roosevelt did not. When I took a closer look, a whole new world fell upon me.
Yikes... it looks like they put the back window on the front of the car. That is ugly.. I don't like the framing around the front windshield. Of course, in my lifetime, I won't be driving one of these..
THAT is a cool car! I'd want to be prez just to have one.
The only thing about the pics is that the car has all zeros for a license plate.
Hideous. A Lincoln would be better.
