Why limos aren't cool anymore

Business Insider

Limos used to be the snazzy way of moving around town, but now luxury transportation is being redefined. Here’s what happened to the limo and what’s replacing it.

Transcript

00:00It used to be that you saw a limousine and wondered who was inside, maybe a celebrity or a CEO.

00:10Limos used to be cool and chic.

00:13Now they're kind of gaudy and icky.

00:16They're dying out even if the industry itself isn't.

00:20Business Insider's Emily Stewart tells us how limos went from decades of prestige to a fast fall out of fashion.

00:26Limos for a long time kind of felt like the height of fancy.

00:30Like a thing a corporate executive would take around.

00:33The first limos were made in the early 1900s.

00:36And they weren't even cars.

00:38They were horse-drawn carriages that just had more space.

00:41Then, in the roaring 20s, manufacturers developed the limo into an elongated automobile.

00:46And they just kept getting longer.

00:48Today, some stretch limos are over 60 feet and easily fit 15 passengers.

00:53And they have luxury touches like a full bar, sofas, and in rare cases, a pool.

00:58As more limos were produced, more folks began renting them out.

01:02Not just the uber-wealthy.

01:04But then something changed.

01:06It's important to talk about the 2008 financial crisis and the recession.

01:11It was a really bad luck in 2008 for a CEO to be popping out of a limo.

01:16So they started opting for more subtle ways of transportation.

01:19After the CEOs, others followed.

01:22Celebrities, brides and grooms, prom-goers, and funeral attendees.

01:27You think about the last few years, kind of quiet luxury has been a trend, right?

01:32Where people want to have some affluent stuff.

01:34They want to have nice things.

01:36They want to do nice things.

01:38But they don't want to look like it.

01:40But it's not just a matter of social status.

01:42Booking a limo isn't not exactly easy or cheap.

01:44Nowadays, with Uber and Lyft, right, you can kind of ride in a nice-ish car, depending.

01:47Without really having to call ahead, without having to plan ahead.

01:51I think that's something that does freak the industry out.

01:54One of the business owners I talked to referred to Uber and Lyft and ride shares as glorified hitchhiking.

02:01And there have been safety issues, too.

02:04In 2013, a limo fire in California killed five members of a bachelorette party.

02:09And in 2018, a stretch limo crash in New York killed 20 people.

02:14If you think about how they're made, they're literally a car, like a Cadillac or a Hummer,

02:19and they're cut in half and then kind of welded back together.

02:22And one guy described it to me as like arts and crafts.

02:25I don't really want to be in a car that feels like arts and crafts.

02:30Few stretch limos are even being made anymore.

02:33And there are many used ones just gathering dust.

02:36You can find a lot of limos online, on Craigslist, on Facebook Marketplace.

02:41So limos aren't dead, but the industry has changed significantly in the past decade or two.

02:46A transportation company that once had several limos in its 50-vehicle fleet might now only have a couple, or none at all.

02:53Many companies are even dropping the word limo from their names.

02:56The modern-day limo is hiding in plain sight.

02:59It's not the stretch limo that you think of.

03:02Most of the time, most of their fleets at this point are just other vehicles.

03:05Like SUVs that offer more space.

03:08Or a party bus.

03:11So coming into this, I was kind of like, huh, weird that limos are gone.

03:15And by the end, I was kind of like, good, good that limos are gone.

03:18We don't want them anymore.

03:20This, to me, felt like a little bit of a case where the marketplace got rid of something that we don't really want around anymore.

03:26And again, I don't want to say every limo is a death trap.

03:29We're really fearmonger people.

03:31But they're not that comfortable.

03:33They're not that safe.

03:35And when you have better options, why not go with those?

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