Coachbuilder John Bumgarner recalls that the first stretch limousines his company produced were called “hearses” by the locals. "The only time they’d ever seen a limousine was behind a hearse," he says. When Esquire magazine writer Bob Greene pulled up to his parents house in a hired limousine in 1981, the neighborhood buzzed. "Is everything all right at the Greene house?" one asked. "No. I know everything’s not all right at the Greene house. There’s a hearse in the driveway..."I liked that line of his: a double "-ous" and a "-ness" topped off with an "excess" is awesome & most appropriate for the subject.... The stretch limousine became a fixture in the movies and a required prop for every script’s mafia Don, drug lord, or corporate bad guy character, as well as for a general symbol of wealth. The epoch was famously represented à la limousine by the television show "Dallas," the movie "Scarface," and, in real life, Donald Trump, who unto himself was a major consumer of and whose name was licensed for a line of stretch limousines. When the first stretch limousines hit the streets, crowds gathered and traffic halted. Limousines have always been the object of curiosity and stares, but the stretches caused a furor. Across the country, newspapers ran articles on these fascinating "stretched," "cutup," or "stretch out" cars. Bob Greene just had to find out for himself. He hired a limousine from Al Golub’s Chicago Limousine Service for four days to feel firsthand "the delirious ridiculousness of this excess."