| In 1999, I asked Freepers for help regarding my research on the history of the limousine: Research assistance: SCANDALS and LIMOUSINES Freepers were most kind with their advice and stories -- and in great FR form, most emphatic in their opinions. Glenn sent me to a Bob Greene article on limousines, which I used in the book. Rich and metalbird1 had great research suggestions. Ronin had a story that was unprintable... (see "Limo Skip" in the glossary on my website, Ronin...) Common Tator, daring to show his opinions... (lol!) made the fine observation on The Long Black Limousine: If you want a true Common Tator Classic, check out his reply no. 16 -- GREAT STORIES old man! I guess we're all glad you failed as a musician... Monocle joined in, and I'm thankful to him. I quoted from his post #5 in the book (sadly, Monocle, my publisher dumped endnotes at the last minute in order to save costs, and my thanks to you and mention of FR went with the cut). Monocle's quotation appears in this extract under A short history of snobbishness (a.k.a. Dispelling a Myth): Part I Many thanks to the Freepers who chimed int!
>>these were some friends of mine...
>>... you won't know her and she wouldn't let me use her name, but she's a rock star all the same ...and unlike Aretha, gorgeous
>>this from the 16th Century, quoted fully earlier... his advice to pick up a lady was to get a carriage and team...
>>Classic!...
>>Ha! Nicollo takin' on the Times...
>>Here's Monocle's quotation!
>>now to slam the (com)Post...
>> CT, here's agreement with your "a limousine now means an SUV they use to haul you to the rent a car place."
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Stretching It CHAPTER EXTRACT:
...If anything, the limousine elicits strong opinions. Universally, it means status, privilege, and wealth, even if borrowed from the Department’s slush fund. No sooner than he was elected Speaker of the House, Rep. Dennis Hastert made the news for use of a limousine. When he was a lowly committee member nobody cared that a hometown friend had long shuttled him about in a personal limousine, but as soon as he became Speaker, the media took note. William F. Buckley noted that none complained about his yacht yet heaped contempt upon him for his stretch limousine. "What is it about the limousine?" he asked. As usual Mr. Buckley was on to something. Money can and is spent in any number of ridiculous ways. Is it that we don’t drive the yacht down Main Street? The rich, the famous, and the dictator’s wife may run into unhealthy press over $300,000 budgets for shoes, but, somehow, footwear is not an international symbol for ostentation and wealth. Political points are scored if an opponent is caught in a limousine, especially outside an apartment that belongs to another than the spouse. Satirists and cartoonists as facilely call upon the limousine to drive home notions of greed, vanity, and the seven deadly sins as they would a cab to the local watering hole. In the movies and television it is an easy metaphor for the antagonist’s wickedness, and just as quickly the hero’s excellence. Off screen, the Hollywood version of the "making it" initiation involves a limousine ride to the Oscars, where some five hundred limousines will be piled up awaiting the country’s celluloid royalty. What is it about the limousine? The money? Is it only acceptable to spend money so long as it is not seen in public? It bothers none if left in the garage, so the limousine certainly conforms to the ‘out of sight out of mind’ rule, but there’s more to it... The luxury? Certainly, but a good sofa is equally comfortable and far less subject to the laws of physics... The ostentation? Maybe. Let us just say that it’s a most useful tool in the bag of showing off. There’s nothing modest about the limousine, yet... The glamour? Indeed it is glamorous, but it doesn’t have to be. It takes some practice, but the limousine can be marvelously discrete, at least if the chauffeur learns to navigate alleyways. The limousine is all that, yet far more. So what is it? Must be more than its cost and visibility, for the emotions provoked are too deep for that. The limousine goes further and covers more ground of the national psyche than one would expect for $100 an hour and a uniformed driver. It’s a combination of things. It’s the chauffeur, the darkened windows, the flaunting, the places it goes, and the people it carries. The limousine is the stuff of fantasies. The limousine strikes a yearning chord for that something else. It’s also an automobile thing, and in this case a very large, in-your-face, gas-consuming, smoke churning, traffic blocking automobile. And it’s our proximity to it. We don’t drive down Belleview Avenue in Newport and really picture ourselves sitting in the parlor. For most of us, even among regular riders of the back seat, we could never actually live in The Breakers, much less rent it out a for an evening. With the limousine, we can. It’s right there, a temptation only a phone call and credit card charge away. The limousine is within reach, yet beyond daily grasp. When we see that big old car, we can actually picture ourselves back there, and we are reminded of that great ride we once took or the cars we gawked at as kids. Want people to think you’re a doctor? Dress like one. Want to feel like a celebrity? Start with a limousine. When imposters flew into town pretending to be Arab sheiks, they didn’t arrange for a taxi to await them at the airport. The mayor wouldn’t have rolled out the red carpet at city hall had the costumed-pranksters arrived in a Pontiac. The limousine gave immediate and unquestioning authority to the entourage. These jokers understood what every good agent and promotor understands: the power of a social icon, the strength of an image properly managed through use of metaphoric allusions to status, celebrity, and virility. The limousine, that is. With the limousine, appearances are everything. Just ask the rain-drenched chauffeur for the old dowager who insisted to arrive in her town car with the driver’s top open no matter the weather, the chauffeur be damned. The image invoked by the limousine is so strong there is a demand for the discrete limousine, be it a sedan or a small stretch. Some operators actually specialize in "conservative" cars, all black limousines that are light on pizazz. The flash factor expands and contracts with the economy, a pattern of great concern to limousine builders and operators. For some, the limousine has provided a brush with fame, having seen so-and-so get in or out of one, or actually riding along. One record company assistant recalls her most memorable limousine ride, "... it was with Aretha Franklin, and I remember it mainly because of the fanfare surrounding it. I can't tell you how it felt to step outside of that limo, people wondering who I was to be riding in her limo. I was dressed nicely, but not like a star or anything, and I was treated special because I was with her. It was cool, like having a taste of stardom." Limousines are etched in many a memory. For some it was a wedding, or, perhaps, the even more memorable bachelor or bachelorette party. For others it was who they saw riding in a limousine. For children, the limousine is simply a wonder. There is, undoubtedly, one other element to the allure of the limousine, something better off unmentioned but powerfully relevant just the same: the limousine as sex symbol. This is part of the myth and history of the automobile in general, only veritably stretched when it comes to the limousine. What pair of fumbling seventeen-year olds wouldn’t have preferred the larger back seat and tinted windows? If wealth is an aphrodisiac, then the limousine is Spanish Fly. Let us not forget La Bruyère’s description of the carriage’s allure. When the lady sees the carriage "stopping at her door...what a charming reception she will give him!" Add twelve feet between the wheels, three hundred more horses, fifty square feet of window tint, twenty yards of leather upholstery, polished wood trim, and a private back seat, and the girls might like to know what forces lurk there inside. Charming, indeed. The seductive power of the limousine was early on understood. In 1921, Donald Ogden Stewart sardonically advised the ambitious young Casanova how to lure and where to land the ultimate catch: "You would then have been introduced, and after dancing nine feet you would have been cut in on by another panting stag. In those nine delirious feet you would have become completely dazed by one of the smoothest lines since the building of the Southern Pacific. You would then have borrowed somebody's flask, gone into the locker room and gotten an edge—not a bachelor-dinner edge but just enough to give you the proper amount of confidence. You would have returned to the ballroom, cut in on this twentieth century Priscilla, and taken her and your edge out to a convenient limousine, or the first tee." So goes the making of a cultural icon... The Anti-Limousine As the country recovered from the 1992 recession and the computer world revved its engines, to the scions of Silicon Valley the limousine came to represent the ancient world of "snail mail" and other low-tech life forms. A CEO driving himself in an old pickup truck was the manly grit of the industry’s "faux puritanism," as described by a sage Forbes writer, Owen Edwards in 1993. Limousines were not agile, self-reliant, or forward-thinking. "If a company pays people to chauffeur around its executives, we start wondering what the philosophy there is about nonessential spending," a venture capitalist told Edwards. This anti-limousine paganism was even practiced by the industry high priest, Bill Gates, who was seen standing in line for a cab at trade shows in the early 1990's. Edwards did find one Silicon Valley CEO who was unapologetic about her chauffeur. Of her four hour daily commute she said, "It would have been a silly decision not to hire a driver," thus preserving, as Edwards wrote, "the rational, elegant solution of back seat productivity." Her ride, though, was in "a big Detroit sedan." The trend towards sedan use reinforces the rule that limousines make a statement. A 1999 New York Times article, "Home, James and Steer Clear of Those Awful Limousines," by Monique Yazigi, quotes an Upper East Side matron who won’t suffer a limousine. When a stretch was sent to fetch her, she "almost died of embarrassment" and "dove into the car" so as to avoid being seen, God forbid, by the neighbors in apartment 48-Z. The limousine was sent by the company filming "The Bonfire of the Vanities," for which she auditioned for the role of a socialite. Apparently she ignores the irony of the situation. We just hope she mastered situational acting, for the "Master of the Universe" felt no compunction to jump into a stretch limousine, if only to navigate two blocks. So strong is the limousine’s bouquet that it is now fashionable among certain elites to not be in a stretch, a "counter-limousine culture," as it were. The article claims the "personally owned car [is] taking the lead in the status game" and names the Mercedes S-Class, "black sport utility vehicle," and the Cadillac DeVille Concours as acceptable (Yazigi scores a point for noting "it must be driven."). Fine cars all, but we take issue. The assumptions here are hopelessly vain. The "personally owned car" could be anything, so why the Mercedes? Ah, one rents limousines and buys a Mercedes. Well. Why not buy a DaBryan 42-inch stretch? Oh, yes, it’s "those awful limousines." Yazigi says counter-limousine citizen Leonardo DiCaprio is driven about New York in a "black Lincoln Navigator, a huge sport utility," seated up front. Henry Ford sat up front -- in a sedan. Eccentrics might choose the front seat, or, like Howard Hughes, drive themselves in old Chevrolets. The fashionably observant sit where they are told. Yazigi quotes another patrician who gets it half-right: "It’s really about the car and driver. Please don’t say chauffeur." "Chauffeur" and "limousine," are out and "car" and "driver" in. What’s the difference? Other than, we suppose, ample passenger space, a customized interior, and a proper chauffeur versus contrarian chic and a cheap disdain at having lost hold of something utterly enjoyable though less exclusive than before. We cordially extend an invitation to these noble riders of, shall we say, smaller vehicles, to go for a little ride in a big old limousine. It won’t have neon lights, and it can be painted any color they like, especially black. It may be a modest 36-inch stretch and seat only four. There will be plenty of space in back, so they won’t have to sit up front for the legroom. And they can buy the car if feeling insecure about sharing a rental with those who live across the tracks. Chauffeured transportation has gone through many changes, from necessity to luxury to convenience to necessity again. It’s always been a matter of showing off, be that to avoid it or otherwise. The Classic Era’s town car was befitting to that age of opulence, outlaws, and flappers. The mid-Century factory limousine was a reflection of the triumph of the corporation, when what was good for GM was good for the rest of us, especially from the back of a Series 75. The Seventies brought the gas crisis, the EPA, and CAFE regulations that inadvertently inflamed the limousine boom of the 1980's, when the more outrageous the better the limousine. The 1990's was a time of consolidation and focus, be it conservative sedans or ultra-stretched exotics, all available to any comer. As we move into the next decade, the limousine has become a stable and permanent fixture, albeit a chameleon that shows different shades of stretch, short-stretch, and ultra-stretch, but whose purpose is ever the same: to enjoy the ride. What is it about the limousine? A short history of snobbishness (a.k.a. Dispelling a Myth): Part I "When I worked in the Pan Am building in New York there was one entrance where ten or more limousines would be lined up waiting for self important people to arrive. I used to get the biggest kick out people trying to define themselves in this pathetic fashion. Ever since that period I refer to limousines as hearses for the brain dead." So went one strong reaction to the limousine. Certainly a famous neighbor to the Pan Am building, Leona Helmsley, did nothing to earn the respect of the "little people." Ridiculousness falls into two categories: amusing or not. Helmsley is not amusing. For the latter, we go back to Donald Trump, over whom The Washington Post took offense (which is amusing unto itself). To discuss The Donald’s speculation on a White House run, a Post reporter went for a ride on Trump’s private 727 jet. The scribe, evidently, was not unmoved: "A man not prone to introspection, he can’t really explain why he relates to the working man, to the self-made hip-hopper. The most likely reason, however, is that if the average Joe suddenly found himself swimming in dough and had no hang-ups about how he might be judged, he would indulge in the level of magnificent excess of which Trump is a master... See my plane. It is expensive. Look at my limo. It is long. This is my girlfriend. Her legs are nearly as long as my limo..." Disdainful, perhaps, but the writer did catch that Trump "had no hang-ups." Isn’t that just it? Social pressure in the Fifties led many a made-good buyer of a new Cadillac turn it in for a Buick after a few weeks of ridicule. Executive Coach was launched the day John Bumgarner bought at auction the "Farmer’s Car," the stretch limousine abandoned by a wealthy farmer who could suffer no more taunts of "high roller." Social pressure defines extravagance. The question is -- and here is where ostentation turns pretentious -- why? A limousine (or not) because you want to, or because you feel like others want you to? There’s no doubt that Trump does as Trump wants. As even the Post concedes, there is nothing pretentious about him. Showing off is great. But, as the guy who sneered at the limousines piled up outside the Pan Am building says, "trying to define themselves" is when we take offense. This is where the New York socialite’s confusion of "driver" and "chauffeur" reveals affectation. The attempt to redefine convention to suit an image one wishes to project is an act of pretension far above the most conspicuous limousine. Above all, it misses the point. A chauffeur is a professional and socially-conscious attendant who happens to drive a limousine. A driver is a driver of a vehicle, among which may be a "black sport utility vehicle" or a Mack truck. So be it. We’d rather delight in the back of a limousine with formal chauffeur at the helm in, as Bob Greene put it, "the delirious ridiculousness of this excess." One of the most poignant limousine stories the authors have heard was about a lady who lived in what may be politely called "the projects." In preparation for her marriage to an enlisted man, she saved every penny to enjoy that day -- her day -- to the utmost. And she did it right. She ordered a limousine early which took her and bridesmaids to the hair dressers, the florist, on errands, and, finally, to the church. Though she couldn’t afford to keep the car after the ceremony, she had pampered herself as wonderfully and as long as possible. As the chauffeur recalled, "she adored it." Now, who is to complain about that? What’s the problem with a limousine to await outside the office? As long as it’s not late, that is. God forbid, as happened to Louis XIV, the coach arrive only just in time. "I almost had to wait," he Royally complained. A Short History of Snobbishness (a.k.a. Dispelling a Myth) Part II: The Poor Chauffeur Descendants of Karl Marx took offense at the treatment of the early chauffeur, he of the middling proletariat, relegated to sole defense against the elements of cap, goggles, coat and gloves, while capitalist oppressors rode in back in shielded splendor. Pity not the shivering chauffeur, for he was among the better paid of household servants and workers in general. Do we lament the lowly social caste of the waiter at the local restaurant for his compliance to our wishes for another fork dropped below the table? The chauffeur is a special breed and has his reasons for the chosen profession. We mustn’t fret over the chauffeur, especially if the open-air cockpit town car he drove was the incomparably smooth Rolls-Royce or the brilliant Duesenberg -- no, of that we are infinitely jealous. Suffice it to say that your average Marxist is not of the mind to appreciate the limousine, a tool of the elite without which any good Kremlin boss wouldn’t have dared take to Soviet streets. The ultimate man of the people, Abe Lincoln, rode in the back of his exclusive Wood Bros. barouche carriage, reigns in the hands of perfectly attired, formal coachman. Maybe Lincoln cracked more jokes than the average 1920's industrialist, but each was happily stationed in the back seat. Americans knew what to do with the strict etiquette of the Gilded Age and took in stride both those who followed its rigid structures the same as those for whom it was rules to be broken. Wealth had gone from the early aristocratic landowners to the rising class of industrialists, many of whom came from the humble origins these social conventions were designed to conceal. George Washington was renowned for his ability to "condescend" to underlings, an act not of scorn but of genuine connection with those of lesser social position. Today’s world demands no condescension to the chauffeur, for there is, according to egalitarian standards, nothing to which to condescend. The Harvard-bred CEO of an international conglomerate will trade off-color jokes with his chauffeur just as easily as he will pose a formal air when riding alongside the Spanish ambassador, and he is truly himself in either situation, not patronizing to the one or the other. Whereas social distinctions before governed the conduct of employer and employed, the functions and meanings of service are today ill-defined. The chauffeur who resets those parameters brings not just the care and ease of service, he bestows dignity and grace to those being served. The opened door transforms the back seat from compartment to carriage. The formalities of speaking when spoken to, proper handling of the door, and passenger assistance are the hallmarks of the professional chauffeur. Rules that have no or malicious intent are meaningful only unto themselves; at best, the rule serves no other purpose that its own enforcement. Not so with the etiquette of chauffeuring, which purposefully addresses passenger safety, comfort, and distinction. Besides, a touch of formality might go a long way towards a more pleasant ride. And if you want to hear the latest crude joke, the chauffeur will gladly comply. A Short History of Snobbishness (a.k.a. Dispelling a Myth) Part III: A Lengthy Case of a Superiority Complex Paul Carey, Jr., is unabashed and unrepentant in his distaste for the stretch limousine. When he sees a stretch Hummer, his reaction is, "God help us." Mr. Carey’s view is hardly uncommon, especially among lovers of older cars. In "The Missing Magic of Limousines," Thomas D. Murray offers a scathing look at the modern stretch limousine: "But there are still limousines today, even people who pretend they mean the same as they once did. But of course, they don’t, can’t, because the concept has been transformed, the cars stretched like taffy into grotesque shapes that destroyed the limousine’s symmetry and splendor, devalued them into thirty dollar rides to the airport and block-long, TV and bar-equipped amusement parks on wheels." Well, now. Please find a nice Duesenberg limousine in a barn somewhere or ride in a Jeep with the rest of the cramped counter-limousine front seat riders. In the course of this project, the authors frequently encountered disdain for the stretch limousine. Aficionados of Classic Era limousines don’t take kindly to the modern stretch, particularly to some of its less dignified destinations. We take exception to this attitude, and not just to beg off the notion that each represents an era. The only real difference between the modern and previous limousines is the user. Everyone has an opinion on style and design, and one person’s taffy-esque stretch is as gorgeous as the "symmetry and splendor" of Murray’s favorite Packard. Nobody yearned to construct a 1910 Peerless wooden box in 1927 any more than today to remake the bulbous, half-breed that was a 1942 Packard town car, whose styling mixture landed it somewhere between a DC-3 and a cut egg (but whose social import was essential to the age). Those offended by a Jacuzzi-sporting forty-foot stretch Hummer feel about the same as the neighbors did in 1949 when your grandfather slapped a Continental Kit on the back of the Buick. Others take offense that the limousine is a tailgate party-car at Sunday football stadiums. But who can really complain that ten buddies can get together for a good time -- drink, have fun, and get to and from the game safely and in world-class comfort? Anyone who does probably never hired Paul Carey’s limousines for college football games. Forty and more years ago the Carey company sent some 25 to 30 cars to every Harvard-Yale game. "A good call," Carey says of those jobs. In 1928, a Carey Packard could take six passengers from New York to Princeton for a football game for all of $45. That’s a very affordable $7.50 a passenger, easily in range of today’s $50 per person for a super-stretch ride to the Rose Bowl. What has changed is that more people today can afford it. Are the cads less drunk and annoying in a Duesenberg than a Lincoln stretch? The limousine as "party car" and the wider social access to it may offend, but gimmicks, gadgets, and the latest useless fashions have always found their way into the back of limousines, especially in the Classic Era. Major Bowes’s electric razor in 1937 was no more ridiculous than Donald Trump’s paper shredder fifty years later. And a limousine does nothing more today than it ever did, that is, getting from here to there comfortably, stylishly, and safely. Shall we trade today’s useless mobile televisions for yesterday’s worthless heaters? Can we sit back again into a secluded and closed rear quarter, or does window tint get the job done? Or should we abandon legroom and self-indulgence altogether and spend our time and money seeking distinction behind the wheel of a two-door "luxury" car? We face today a general leveling of society. While more do what only the few could do before, few do today what the best did in the past. With mass and instant communication the best is visible to us all; equally so is the very worst, which is far more interesting, it seems, to the minds of the network programming directors. The poorest slums are showered daily by consumerism. What’s to make the kid not want to join it, too? Ok, he will be hardly versed in good taste. When he signs that multi-million dollar football contract, there will be no Masters degree in Fine Arts along with it. The "nouveau rich" have always suffered this illness, especially in the Gilded Age when not even the largest fortunes bought automatic entry to New York society. Bad taste in the Twenties was no less ugly than bad taste today. Common may be cheap, and that won’t change. So what’s to offend? That a local Joe can enjoy a night out riding around like a Rockefeller? That multi-millionaires haven’t the taste to spend a jet plane month’s fuel bill on a more elegant custom limousine? The authors won’t abide egalitarian complaints of people just enjoying themselves the best they can afford any more than the lowest-common denominator that so often guides the present-tense, be it 1925, 1962, or 2000. It’s like getting worked up over the "Top 40." Or renouncing Mozart because he’s dead. So let’s celebrate the finest we encounter. Mechanics aside, the difference between a 1933 Cadillac V-16 town car and a year 2000 stretched DeVille is that one is longer and the other taller. They’re both made for the same thing. Let us not lament a lost past; let us celebrate and do our best to recreate it (its better half, that is -- who wants to tune a car every other day?) Every time a coachbuilder takes an order for a purple stretch limousine, let there be another double-cut, short-stretch appointed with tasteful woodwork. Where’s the next V-16 coming from? And when it comes, will you ride gloriously in the back, or just fret that the old one is gone? Extravagance and glamour are subjective themes. Splendor, elegance and dignity are permanent, variable in particular form but anchored to the core human impulse to show off, with neither contempt nor hesitation. Copyright 2002 Enjoy!
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Hope you and Grover Cleveland are still getting along.
Regards,
:-)
Great job. I am proud of you!