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.
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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?