Caught sight of one last night, and couldn't help thinking the latter....
No doubt they appeal to some - maybe it depends on the 'base' vehicle being stretched ('de-based'???).
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I know of a stretched ford orion - can't be able to get much worse than that can you?
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Wouldn't have one, but love going out in them. Especially in the US where they're *REALLY* big.
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Must admit I cringe when I see one. It's invariably full of drunk girls on a hen night, waving an obscene blow-up man out the window and generally behaving exactly like they would if they were on the bus. I have no real objection to them behaving this way when they are out normally, but set against the regal background of a posh limo it makes them look... I can't find a polite word... like absolute trailer trash.
If the occupants were graceful it would be fine. It's the difference between someone tarted up to the nines in cheap gold from Argos, and someone resplendent in a cocktail dress and classy jewelery.
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>>someone resplendent in a cocktail dress and classy jewelery.
I tried that. I would have to admit that I didn't look great.
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As Jeremy Clarkson put it, "they've got all the class of a northern nightclub."
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As mentioned earlier, depends on the base vehicle:
American cars look cheap. Mercs look good, Rolls & Bentley good.
Saw a VERY stretched Hummer in the states and still can't decide whether it was class or trash!
I agree that the behaviour of the occupants can affect the perception of the average onlooker.
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Hey your choice. The trailer trash vomiting on your shoes on the bus or train, or vomiting in someone elses stretch?
The bit that gets me is that they are always the tatty ones that have seen better days in the states before beoing shipped over here. Its very hard to make 25 feet of body filler look good.
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If it's black it's cool. White and it's crass.
Agree wholeheartedly with RF - they have to be in very good condition, and clean and shiny as well.
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I have seen a stretched Vectra in black (that'll be for funerals then...) and it just looked silly. A stretched Volvo doesn't look bad, but a Vectra?
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Utterly utterly crass.
Went to the Varsity match in one Tuesday. Organised trip nothing I could do about it.
Cost an arm and a leg that could have been spent on booze AND we naturally ended up stuck in traffic AND the guy took a wrong turn and then had to do a three hundred point turn to go back the other way.
Better on the train.
Leave it to the white stilleto with plaster on ankle crowd.
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Don't they have stretched Lada's out in Cuba? Remember Clarkson making refenece to them on one of non Top Gear shows, and subsequently seeing them on Auf Wiedersehen Pet when the boys were supposedly filming out there.
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>>Went to the Varsity match in one Tuesday.
You as well ! No Dosh and I were there also.
Although let me assure you that opting for train travel doesn't neccessarily mean that you get home without issue.
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Crass not Class. Have taken to picking SWMBO up from events in the Landie (now resplendant in its new, genuine Land Rover green coat). It does draw glances, not sure whether they are envious or not...
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They're for students and chavs.
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I don't agree.
I have had Limos pick up my parents from various airports around the world when they have visited me. It always goes well, and they are an exceptionally comfortable form of travel, especially if one is a little frazzled from a long flight.
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There are one or two firms in my area that provide them for hire for nights out or other purposes - all of these US originating vehicles, mostly with white or black bodies, are beautifully presented both inside and out.
It's certainly a way to arrive in style....:-)
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
What\'s for you won\'t pass you by
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Put your finger on it Mark. Like a lot of things in the world. Objects (cars included) can look classy in their home enviroment but a little bit doubtful in good old blighty.
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True: Englishmen always have this screwed up pygmy vision of what they think cars ought to look like then deride anyone who has a different idea via some sort of self-imposed superiority complex. Especially if they happen to be American.
Cool, baby, just cool.
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Definitely horrid. I'd prefer the Land Rover option anytime.
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Definitely horrid. I'd prefer the Land Rover option anytime.
>>
I cannot recall seing a looooong Land Rover on a hen night.
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Maybe PU has one of those Land Rover land trains like they have at the Heritage Centre at Gaydon??
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Leicester Square
World Premiere
A sense of occasion
Just about okay
Average UK town
Cheap Nightclub
Expensive booze
Drunken unruly Hens
"Limo 1" or equivalent number plate
Completely crass
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Mate of mine has a stretched Austin Princess (the late 70s one) tucked away in a garage in Liverpool. Its black so we suspect its a funeral car, it was done well and just looks weird. He's had it a while so it will probably need some work but it could well be the only one unlesss you otherwise......
as always
Mark
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>>.If the occupants were graceful it would be fine. It's the difference between someone tarted up to the nines in cheap gold from Argos, and someone resplendent in a cocktail dress and classy jewelery.
On purely aesthetic terms, if a good looking young woman wears cheap argos jewellery she's still a good looking young woman. An unattractive woman in classy jewellery and coctail dress is still unattractive. Before anyone accuses me of being sexist, I'm sure the same applies to men, - A Greek God in jeans and T-shirt versus a toad in am Armani suit, sort of thing!
Perhaps there's something I'm missing. Perhaps that's why I make do with a 10 year old Passat when I could be driving a 2 year old Discovery!
Cheers, Sofa Spud
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I guess there's a place for funeral cars, but I was thinking more on the lines of 30-foot long white Lincoln 'Town' cars with ruched white leather interiors - and the obligatory arrow-shaped TV aerial on the boot (or trunk, perhaps).
As to whether they look more at home in other countries, there's also a fair number of them in Saudi Arabia. Hmmmm........!
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cool or crass?
I live in Stretch-Limo-City, also known as Gants Hill. Here you will find most of them dumping their cargo of Ra-Ra skirted, white hi-heeled, orange skinned geezer-birds outside Faces NightClub. Smashed when they get there, worse when they leave. I think they are the motoring equivalent of stone cladding on houses, the green oval eyed girl painting in the living room, the wishing well and gnome in the front garden, the mock Tudor beams with Georgian windows, the sofa dumped in the garden with a set of old mini wheels and an engine. i.e. not everyones cup of tea, but wouldn't knock their right to hire one. Snobbish? moi?
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Yuk, round hear in Nottingham, there are a few of these, run from council estates, they are white American ones. They pick up groups of poor people with ideas above their stations, who have too few clothes, too much makeup, cheap perfume, and loud mouths, they then drive around hanging out of the windows with big grins, then they get dropped off at a cheap nightclub e.g ISIS or The Palais.
Not my cup of tea.
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All they need now is some lovely blue lights in their windscreen washers, and some flashing neons underneath!
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Can't see Michael Caine racing round the streets in this one:
www.carpages.co.uk/bmw_mini/bmw_mini_mini_xxl_11_0...6
[now away back to look at all the other results I got when I searched for "stretch mini" !] :)
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Now a Maybach or the long body versions of the S class and the A8 I can go for. Stretch limos, well, it depends. As RF pointed out, it's hard to make that much filler look good. Now a stretch newish lincoln town car in black is class. In silver it's ok. In white it will do at the right occassion. What fails to pass muster is a 20 year old battered leviathan complete with pink lighting discharging it's chav occupants in the centre of Bournemouth on a Saturday night.
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Keep your dime a dozen Town Cars, next time I'm in Vegas, THIS is what I want....
tinyurl.com/4j2d8
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For those who didn't know, a Lincoln Town Car is actually a Ford.
Lincoln has been Fords Luxury brand in the USA since 1922.
So as it's really a Ford, this would explain why most hate them..
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Someone mentioned Land Rovers, and by coincidence one of the car programmes on Sky last night (can't remember which, there are so many of them) had a stretched Landie, works built as a one off. I am not a fan of stretched limo's, but this did actually look the business.
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Keep your dime a dozen Town Cars, next time I'm in Vegas, THIS is what I want.... tinyurl.com/4j2d8
I saw one of these near San Francisco. You see a lot of stretch limos around here, normally based on the Lincoln Town Car. This one though, really stood out. Unfortunately, when driving past, it was possible to actually see the bodywork flexing. In Vegas you could rent out a Town Car based Limo that's 100 feet long and articulated in the middle, I wanted to post a link to the company offering this but the site seems to be down.
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The flex is probably necessary to deal with road undulations, in the same way the engine pods and wings on a 747 wobble all over the place in rough air :+O
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The flex is probably necessary to deal with road undulations, in the same way the engine pods and wings on a 747 wobble all over the place in rough air :+O
Good point, hadn't thought of that. Have you noticed that the wings on the 747-400 and the newer Airbuses wobble less than those on the older jumbos? I spend far too much time on airplanes.
Oddly enough I've just watched a program on the History Channel about the development of stretch limos. Apparently the reason they all have vinyl roofs is because the body flex permanently creases the roof panels and the vinyl offers a good way to hide it. Also, the one thing that really led to the widespread acceptance of rental stretch limos was the depression in the 1920s when companies wanted to get rid of their own limos, so they sold them to rental companies and rented them back. The rental companies started to compete with one another to offer biggest and best etc. and the rest is history. They also showed in the program a limo with a whirlpool bath in it that you can apparently also rent, complete with babes - sorry hostess service.
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"they've got all the class of a northern nightclub."
I guess that JC hasn't been to any southern nightclubs recently.
If the criteria for crass is the amount of vomit and number of occupants wearing white stilletos then a weekend black cab takes the biscuit.
"Have taken to picking SWMBO up from events in the Landie..It does draw glances.."
They're wondering how the heck she's gonna get in there wearing a cocktail dress!
Kevin...
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Is it the Limo or the people who travel in them?
It seems reading most of these posts that it's both which is a bit unfair to the people who travel in them. If that's what they want to spend their money on good luck to them. Nothing wrong with a good night out and letting someone else do the driving and having a little fun! Come on you miserable lot lighten up!
As for the car it's got 4 wheels, a V8 (probably) and an ever so vulgar American image so that makes them interesting for me so yes their cool!
Would they get on the TG cool wall though?
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There is a legal imlication. Some of these when they can carry 8 or more fall into Minibus regs. There is a view that a lot of the companies running these regs disregard the law and they are viewed as a road safety issue. Question would you allow your teenage daughter to get into an unregulated vehicle with potentially catastrophic implications in the event of a bump....? South Wales Police ran a purge on them recently (I believe)
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Whatever lights your candle. Whatever floats your boat. Whatever.
--
L\'escargot by name, but not by nature.
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I'm afraid I can't see one without laughing.
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Tacky. *Distinctly* tacky.
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The US company I once worked for drove me to and from their HQ in Greenwich Connecticut and JKF Airport in a stretched limo.
very comfortable on the flat
tyres squealed on every corner above 30mph (and I mean EVERY corner) and many when parking!
very noisy on bumps (presumably the lengthened body was not matched by a tuned suspension.
Not my cup of tea.. how nayone can chose to drive one in the UK with our narrow streets etc beats me..
But as a taxi when someone else is driving and you are not in a hurry.. great.
pity about the unfortunate c***otations in people's minds: I recall one film with some short US superstar (Tom Cruise) where he was in the back of one.. etc
madf
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What connotations does the swear filter see in connotations? (or was there a typo?)
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Where I work, in Bath, they have these -
www.slt56.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/classic/Uxbridge/jp...g
So stretch limos, - pffft!!!!
Cheers, Sofa Spud
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theres a Maybach parked outside the Brussels Conrad most of the time, I guess if you can afford to live there permanently a Maybach isnt such an expensive car, or maybe the hotel own it, never asked for a ride in it though
but the fact that simon idiot off "find a poor singer and rip them off selling rubbish records to the unwashed" has one I'd stay well clear
been in the back of Lincolns in the US lots of times, goes with the running from hotel to hotel lifestyle over there, dont actually cost anymore than a regular taxi, but you have to book them the day before which u dont need to do with a taxi, no roadholding at all in the ice though back end slides allover, and actually not that impressive as a comfy ride after a while, and surprizingly little boot space
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, no roadholding at all in theice though back end slides allover,
In 'Vegas???
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allover the US
being in the back of one in several foot of chicago snow is funny, boy would a 4 x 4 make more sense
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This is so funny. What should I see backing up the street this morning? Yep - a white stretch. Looked like a Lincoln.
--
Adam
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What connotations does the swear filter see in connotations? (or was there a typo?)
Typo methinks. Lose and "n" and add an "o"
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