Glamorous History: The Hot Tub Limo
“Nothing can really beat that,” Andy Wagner, the owner of Anaheim’s Ultimate Limo told the Los Angeles Times in 1997 about this 40-foot-long Lincoln Town Car with a jacuzzi in the rear. If limos are a rolling stunt in excess, then adding a hot tub is like putting sprinkles on top of maraschino cherries.
From the first stretch limo built in Fort Smith, Arkansas, in 1928 to the Midnight Rider, a rolling semi-truck limo dance party, the stretch limo has had a decadent, wild life filled with guys named Vini and heart-shaped hot tubs debuting in Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous limo battles. Below, the erratic legacy of limos with jacuzzis, provided mostly by car magazines and limousine business sites.
1. “Limousine” is a French word that originally referred to a city in France named Limoges. It became a name for an extra-long automobile because it bore a resemblance to the type of hood worn by residents of the French village it was named after.
2. People were first introduced to limos during the swing-music era, when big band leaders such as Glenn Miller and Artie Shaw would use them to transport musicians and instruments.
3. According to its Kickstarter page, the Carpool DeVille— once used by a one-time Bachelorette contestant who is also an “amateur sex coach”—is touted as the “world’s first (and only!) fully functional, fully mobile hot tub.”
4. The idea for the Carpool DeVille started with a 1996 prototype built into an ’82 Chevy Malibu. It won a Guinness World Record for World’s Fastest Motorized Hot Tub. The DeVille was first dreamed up by a group of Canadian engineering students in the ‘90s.
5. In May, Motortrend reported on “The American Dream,” a 100-foot-long Cadillac and the world’s longest car built by Hollywood car customizer Jay Ohrberg, designer of the DeLorean in Back to the Future, a car made out of two green bathtubs, and everything in between.
6. This wild behemoth was a small rolling town, containing a putting green, king-sized waterbed, multiple themed rooms, a helipad, a pool, and of course, a jacuzzi. Based off a 1976 Cadillac Eldorado, the limo was so long it required two engines and two drivers.
7. It’s unclear what happened to The American Dream between being at car fairs and parades in the ‘80s and early ‘90s and turning up as a rusty shell of itself in 2010. The car seems to have been abandoned at a New Jersey warehouse after a company used it for promotion.
8. The limo travelled to Autoseum in New York to be restored by students, but plans fell through and the monster limo is currently at the Dezerland Park car museum in Orlando, Florida.
9. Between 1978 and 1999, the number of limousine operators jumped by 8,500. The luxury of riding in a limo became more democratized as companies stretched “pretty much any vehicle” as Frank Figueroa, president of Pinnacle Limousine Manufacturing told Atlas Obscura.
10. Meet the Limo King of Los Angeles, Vini “Big Daddy” Bergeman! He was the king of the burgeoning LA limo scene in the ‘80s, building stretch Porsches for Rocky Aoki, the founder of Benihana, to a 36-passenger Lincoln for Sheikh Hamad Bin Hamdan Al-Nahayan of the United Arab Emirates. The car was so big, that it needed to be cut by 18 inches to meet California traffic laws.
11. ‘80s pop singer Pebbles can be seen riding in this heart-shaped hot tub limo in an episode of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. Today, you can visit the car at the Hollywood Cars Museum in Las Vegas, also home to some rescued Liberace outfits from his now-closed museum.
