For an Elegant Fantasy Evening or Just a Peaceful Ride, Folks Find Limos Give Them . . . A Luxurious Lift

Fantasy, like lightning, strikes in the oddest places. One afternoon several months ago, it struck Linda Melton in the employee store at the Allied Signal Aerospace Co. in Torrance.

Melton, who works in the purchasing department, filled out an entry blank for a contest called “A Night on the Town,” sponsored by Ticketron. The prize package included two tickets to any Ticketron event, a dinner at Le Dome and a limousine for the evening.

“When they called and said I’d won, it was like a dream come true,” Melton says. “We went out for my fiance’s 41st birthday, and neither of us had ever been in a limousine before. The whole evening was an experience we’ll never forget.”

The Ticketron event they chose to attend was a performance of “Les Miserables,” but when they found out the play was three hours long, they opted to save the tickets for another night. Instead, they spent the after-dinner hours cruising the city, drinking Champagne and luxuriating in the atmosphere of wealth and privilege that a limousine creates.

“A limousine is much more than just a long black car driven by a man in a uniform,” says Rick Granard, vice president of operations for Los Angeles-based Liberty Limousine, the company that provided the limousine for Melton’s fantasy evening.

“It’s a doorway into a world of luxury, a world where every man is wealthy and handsome and every woman is beautiful. It’s a world that most of us can’t afford to live in but like to visit once in a while.”

From Simple to Sublime

Such visits to the “fantasy zone” happen every day in Los Angeles, in varying degrees of complexity. Most often it’s just a couple out for a special evening, splurging on a taste of the good life. Sometimes it involves parents renting a limousine on a son or daughter’s birthday to travel to Disneyland. Or sometimes surprises, such as walking out of the house in the morning intending to drive to work and discovering your spouse has a limousine waiting to make your day.

And it escalates from there into the atmospheric realms of radio-station promotional gimmicks.

“A couple of years ago,” Granard recalls, “when pop star Prince’s movie ‘Purple Rain’ was playing in the theaters, there was an incident in which one of his bodyguards was said to have gotten into a fracas, so a local radio station held a contest in which the 100th caller won an evening in one of our limousines, fully outfitted in purple, from paint job to interior. The evening started out on Sunset Strip at the nightclub where the incident was reported to have happened, and wound up at the West Hollywood sheriff’s station.”

Although such offbeat fantasy scenarios can skyrocket the cost, you don’t really have to be rich to indulge in the feeling of exclusive luxury, the prime attraction of a limousine. The going rate for renting from most companies is about $50 per hour. There is usually a three-hour minimum, with a 15%-20% gratuity to the driver--either built in or strongly recommended. And to make it all as accessible as possible, most limousine companies take credit cards.

There are, however, a variety of considerations aside from price. As with any other business, limousine companies vary widely in the quality of their services, and nothing will pour cold water on a fantasy faster than climbing into a limousine with a shoddy interior, a rattling ride and a chauffeur who acts as if he were driving a taxi.

“There are 1,200 limousine companies in operation between San Diego and Santa Barbara, 900 of them within 75 miles of Beverly Hills,” says Roger Ward, general manager of the Limousine Store in Los Angeles, a dealership that sells new limousines.

“All of the better hotels in town deal with limousine services, and probably the best way to make sure you have a good experience is to book your limousine through the concierge at a hotel,” he says.

Ward offers a number of other tips for those determined do-it-yourselfers. “Bandit” limousine companies, usually one- or two-car operations in which the owner is also the driver, sometimes operate without insurance coverage. So if you pick the company out of the phone directory, make sure the advertisement contains a Public Utilities Commission number to verify the fact that the company is licensed and insured.

And, Ward suggests, book your limousine at least several days in advance. On special occasions, such as Valentine’s Day and New Year’s Eve, you may need to book several weeks in advance. And don’t be surprised if the cost per hour and minimum number of hours are increased on these holidays.

If possible, look over the limousine you intend to rent. Ask how many miles are on the car and who the builder is. AHA, DaBryan, Executive, Corporate and Kelly are acknowledged to be the “big five.”

Also, ask how long the “stretch” of the limousine is. Sixty inches is the industry standard and will seat six people comfortably. Some companies, such as Ultra Limo, offer cars 40 feet long, with six wheels, a hot tub or spa in the trunk and sufficient interior room not only for a rock ‘n’ roll band, but roadies and groupies as well.

“These block-long novelty cars always turn the evening into something of a circus event, and that can be fun if your tastes run to that sort of thing,” Ward says. “But most often the key to enjoying your limousine experience is how the company and driver handle the details. You generally get the best service from a mid-size company, one that runs six to 15 cars. Any larger than that and it tends to become impersonal.”

Many limousine companies offer the option of food and drink on board, but a top-class company such as Liberty Limousine sets the luxury standard. A morning rental comes with hot croissants, orange juice and a choice of regular or decaffeinated coffee. In the afternoon, it’s peanuts and pretzels, while cheese, hard salami and Champagne are the order of the evening.

Needle and Thread

Present at all times are fresh flowers, the day’s newspaper and the Liberty “E-Kit,” containing everything from a needle and thread to spare panty hose, nail polish and several shades of makeup.

Sinatra, All the Way

“I hired a Liberty limousine to take me to my first Sinatra concert, and they really went the extra distance,” travel manager Leda F. Alpert recalls. “Our driver had driven Sinatra a couple of times, there was Sinatra music in the tape player and they even provided white roses for us to give him at the end of the concert. It was truly one of the great nights of my life.”

If all this still sounds a bit highfalutin, consider the perspective of a man who’s in a profession that could feel disdain for limousines and the excesses they stand for.

“In L.A., a limousine isn’t really a status symbol so much as a peaceful island in the middle of a sea of traffic,” CPA Robert P. Dubin says. “My wife and I attend many community functions, and sometimes we take a limousine so that the experience is a pleasure from start to finish. I can’t imagine a worse beginning or end to a party than having to spend an hour each way doing battle on the freeways.”