‘Rolling Fortress’ Presidential Limo Makes Final Stop

It carried four U.S. presidents safely for more than 54,000 miles in dozens of countries. But in the end, the “Rolling Fortress” presidential limousine ran out of gas Friday about 24 inches from its final resting place at the Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace.

“We had calculated exactly how much gas we would need because we wanted the tank to be empty, but it ran out of gas and we had to push it the last two feet,” said Evie Lazzarino, a Nixon library spokesperson.

It took four men to muscle the 11,000-pound, 22-foot car to its parking place in the library’s Domestic Affairs Gallery. Workers earlier cut a limo-size hole in the wall to get the modified 1967 Lincoln Continental into the building. The car was moved from beneath a nearby awning on the grounds into the library to celebrate Presidents Day weekend. When the limo was built by Ford Motor Co. in 1967, the $500,000 price tag made it the most expensive car ever made. It is equipped with 2 tons of armor plating, 2-inch bulletproof glass (thicker than most fighter jet cockpits) and steel disc tires capable of going up to 50 mph even if they’re all flat.

Those safety features almost doomed the car after its retirement in 1978.

“These cars are usually destroyed,” Lazzarino said. “The Secret Service will destroy the car to see how much it can take. There aren’t too many places you can see one.”

But this one ended up in storage and was donated to the library in 1996.

Now visitors can peer into the same back seat where Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger huddled in Moscow to protect their conversations from KGB spies. “It was the one place they felt they could talk privately,” Lazzarino said.

The limo also carried Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson, Gerald R. Ford and Jimmy Carter.