Every step of the president is rigorously planned and taken with the most sophisticated security measures. Cadillac One is a vehicle like no other: the presidential supercar is a true four-wheeled bunker! Whenever the president moves around, he uses his armored limousine. After all, we are talking about the safety of the highest authority in the United States.
The Cadillac One is almost more resistant than a tank and is equipped with the most advanced technology. This black sedan is part of a fleet of 12 cars that cost 1. A small, popular car weighs an average of kg. That means that this limousine weighs the equivalent of at least six cars. The presidential supercar can consume up to a liter of fuel at every meters!
Have you thought about how much it costs to keep a vehicle like this? If you drive an average of 10 km a day with your car, you would spend a total of 25 liters per day, which is almost a full tank in 24 hours.
The doors are about 20 cm thick and each one weighs the same as a Boeing back door. The windows are strictly bullet proof, made of five layers of glass and polycarbonate.
No one, except the driver, can lower them and only 5 cm. The car is fully protected against any type of attack. The entire bodywork of Cadillac One is approximately 13 cm thick and is made of layers of hardened steel, aluminum, titanium and bullet-proof ceramics.
The structure is reinforced with steel bars and can even withstand an explosive. Of course, the car cannot handle very heavy weaponry, but explosives like dynamite will not do much harm to this limousine.
In case the tires are destroyed, The Beast could continue to run on the steel rims. With that, we simply realize nothing can stop this car. Even if the tires get flat, the vehicle is shot or an explosion happens next to it, the car would continue nearly intact. Five-inch thick bulletproof windows contain at least five layers to put a damper on any effort by subversives.
And those gigantic, nearly bus-size Goodyear tires are Kevlar-reinforced run-flats capable of keeping The Beast on the road for quite some distance if needed. The interior is sealed off from the outside world to reduce risks of a chemical attack, while a special foam surrounds the fuel tank to insulate it in the event of an impact.
It's exceedingly well-equipped. Pop open The Beast's trunk and it is said that you'll find everything from firefighting equipment and oxygen tanks to a cache of the president's blood type.
There are tear gas canisters, shotguns and, supposedly, grenade launchers, integrated into The Beast. It holds seven passengers.
At the very least, The Beast has three passengers aboard - the driver, the president's lead Secret Service protective agent in the front passenger seat and, of course, the president himself. However, four additional seats in the back are available - three rearward facing spots on a bench and one spot next to the president for a guest. A folding desk separates the president from his guest's spot.
Somewhat surprisingly, the president's bench is covered in a dark blue cloth rather than leather although plenty of hide is on board. Shoulder belts that retract toward the center of the bench and buckle into the outboard corners - the reverse of a normal rear seat - are included. The Beast is not alone. The Secret Service actually has a few Beast-like vehicles. That's when automakers—really just two for the past half century—have often revealed new wheels for the country's top executive.
But will we see see a new Cadillac presidential limousine roll down Pennsylvania Avenue on January 20th? If you've been expecting an entirely new presidential limousine, you may have to wait another four to eight years, at least until January That's because presidential limousines have largely been on eight-year cycles for the past 30 years, ever since President Bill Clinton began using a Cadillac Fleetwood limousine during his first term, replacing a Lincoln limousine used by President George H.
Bush for a short four years during his single term in office. And the latest presidential limousine , if you recall, did not appear until about two years ago, about halfway into President Donald Trump's term, not quite missing a contractual government deadline but also raising some questions about its development period.
This means that the current crop of presidential limousines is only about two years old and that an entirely new design isn't due at least until January at the earliest, if Cadillac chooses to return to the inauguration cycle to reveal a new vehicle.
But that doesn't mean that President Joe Biden won't be using a different vehicle from the outgoing president, because there aren't just one or two presidential limousines of a single design at any given moment, but a much larger number and a larger mix, with past and present limousines serving the president and vice president during different trips.
But before we get into that, it's best to back up to just before what is the "modern era" of presidential limousines. The end of the Clinton years effectively marked the end of car-based limousines.
The Clinton years were a somewhat different time in presidential limousines, with the Cadillac Fleetwood-based limousine essentially being the last one to have been based on a production sedan with an altered roof structure. All subsequent vehicles have been SUV-based and effectively designed from scratch on the outside with some vague allusions to existing Cadillac models.
The modern era of presidential limousines effectively began with the inauguration of President George W. Bush in , during whose first term in office an entirely new vehicle type debuted based on General Motors' GMT platform, the same that underpinned its large SUVs.
Those limos were not really based on any existing passenger car or SUV, featuring a custom structure and bodystyle. They also used some clever defense-through-design characteristics, such as being tall enough to obscure the body of a president who just exited or is about to enter the vehicle, as seen from ground level, while also incorporating a level of ballistic protection that previous Fleetwood-based limousines did not offer.
The result, from a design standpoint, was not all that elegant in real life, with immensely thick pillars and a boxy, visually heavy roof, but its size was hard to judge on TV screens and thus the cars did not look particularly strange.
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