The Changing ‘grill’ of Limousines

It has been many years, when I was young, dumb and owned a limousine. This was not one of these bus-long jobs that the people prefer to rent today, as our car was a ‘normal’ stretched 7 passenger formal. Believe it or not, a couple of decades ago a car with a 145 inch wheelbase was considered fairly large. But check out the link HERE, to see what today’s 10 – 15 passenger limos have morphed into, and you’ll understand that now we’re dealing with a whole new breed of steed.

Stretching cars to excess is probably not as much of surprise as is the introduction of the SUV limo conversion. Now it seems more 4 wheel drive trucks and specialized ‘weird-mobiles’ are being lengthened, tinted, washed & waxed. For a minute there I bet you thought you were at the hair salon or spa huh? I wonder what kind of parties these people are going to that need 4X4 all-terrain limos? Maybe these Deliverance-type ‘special events’ are in the boonies, or ‘big shot celebrities’ prefer to answer the call of nature, by hiring giant 4X4 limousines to help them take ‘VIP’s’ in the woods?

I always loved the romance of owning a limo until I started DRIVING the ‘typical’ people who wanted to rent them. Oh sure once in awhile I’d get a nice couple that just wanted to go to dinner and then out to the theater. But mostly I would get loads of classless drunk people who wanted to drink more and scream out the windows at the Crips and Bloods in bad parts of town. That is always fun to be the only sane one in a suit and helmet, trying to negotiate the ‘rules’ of a rumble between gangbangers and prom rejects. I thought I was just hired to drive - not hold the microphone at a WWF cage match and clean ‘puke’ and goo off my car at 3 A.M. in the morning?

So needless to say I am no longer an entrepreneurial chauffeur & limousine magnate. Without all the French words that means, I’m not magnetically ‘attracted’ to limousines like bugs seem to be to those hanging ‘purple-light, screened zapper things’. Chauffeurs are like glorified bus jockeys and cabbies in a combat zone. So when I forget what my limo-life was like, I simply look at those dingy yellow cabs stuck outside the airport for hours on end. That’s the perfect representation of a job which mainly requires you to ‘hurry up and wait’ but with a little more polish (or other favorite type hot dog) … and oh yeah – a really COOL hat!