After decades as symbol of affluence, stretch limo ‘gone like the dodo bird’
Over a few days in early March, carmakers and limousine company operators gathered at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas for an annual convention, where they went to panels and parties and admired shiny new party buses, vans, and black sport utility vehicles.
But something was missing. “There wasn’t one stretch limousine on the show floor,” said Robert Alexander, president of the National Limousine Association, a trade group. “Not one.”
Decades ago, stretch limos were a symbol of affluence, used almost exclusively by the rich and famous. Over time, they became more of a common luxury, booked for children’s birthday parties or by teenagers heading to the prom.
These days, it seems as if hardly anyone is riding in a stretch limo. While the limousine name has stuck, the limo industry has shifted to chauffeur services in almost anything but actual stretch limos, which have largely been supplanted by black SUVs, buses, and vans.
Today, the stretch limo represents less than 1 percent of services offered by limo companies, down from about 10 percent a decade ago, according to the association.
“The stretch limo is — what’s the expression? — gone like the dodo bird,” Alexander said.
Limo company operators and industry leaders say that the demise of the stretch limo can be attributed to the cumulative effect of a series of blows over several years.
The first, they said, was the Great Recession. Then came the rise of ride-hailing services such as Uber and Lyft, and a pair of deadly stretch limo crashes that ushered in new regulations in New York state, one of the industry’s most important markets. Over that time, stretch limos gradually fell out of favor, as passengers opted to travel somewhat less conspicuously in sleek sedans or black SUVs.
The birthplace of the stretch limo is believed to be Fort Smith, Ark. Armbruster Stageway, a coach builder that started off restoring horse-drawn wagons more than 100 years ago, is credited with creating the first combustion engine limousine in the 1920s. By 1985, the company was one of the leading producers of limos in the United States, making about 1,000 a year.
But around that time, many car companies stopped making limos. Specialty coachmakers filled the void by taking a different approach: cutting a sedan in half, inserting a midsection, and welding everything together. For about $50,000, custom manufacturers promised deluxe results that could include a TV and even a bed in addition to the obligatory well-stocked bar.
As more limos were produced, they became more accessible and began attracting a clientele beyond celebrities and the über-rich. People began booking them for airport trips. A restaurant in New Jersey offered to pick up diners in a limo, drive them to dinner, and take them home afterward. And for some suburban teenagers, it became a rite of passage to pile into a stretch limo during prom season.
“In the best-case scenario, somebody would use you all day to go to meetings in, let’s say, Manhattan,” Alexander said, adding that a driver could then take a client to a hotel to freshen up before whisking the customer back out on the town. “That kind of coincided with kind of the nightlife of the city coming alive in the late ’70s and ’80s,” he said.
Limousine operators like Scott Woodruff, president and chief executive of Majestic Limo & Coach in Des Moines, Iowa, made adjustments for the rising demand. By the early 2000s, an era when the Hummer limo first appeared and party buses were being tricked out with bench seats, TVs, and minibars, stretch limos made up about a quarter of the vehicles in his fleet.
Then the housing market collapsed in 2008, setting in motion the longest and sharpest economic downturn since the Great Depression — and the beginning of the end of the stretch limo.
The downturn led companies to cut spending and shed workers. Demand for stretch limo rides cratered, as unemployment and gas prices soared.
The country was still in the throes of the recession when Uber was founded in 2009. Its main competitor, Lyft, arrived in 2012, and together they shook up the taxi industry and also made chauffeured black cars more accessible.
Changing customer tastes were also a factor in the plummeting demand for stretch limos, according to Jeff Rose, president of Attitude, a chauffeur service in Queens.
“When a stretch pulls over, everybody turns around to see who’s getting in or getting out,” Rose said. These days his clients prefer the discretion of a black sedan or SUV.