A long time back, theshepherds in a French province developed protective cloaks to protectthemselves from rain and storms. In 1902, a car was developed, which had asimilar-looking hooded compartment for the passengers to protect them from theelements. The driver of the car used to sit separately in the front. Because ofits resemblance with the provincial garment, the car was named after thatprovince. The name of this place is Limousin and the car, which went on to become one of the mostfamous vehicles in the history of the automobile industry, was named after it.

The first limos were any carwith an enclosed passenger compartment and the driver acting as the chauffeur.The stretch limos were developed in Arkansas in 1928 by a coach building company Armbruster, asan answer to the highly popular and affordable Model T cars by Henry Ford. Thestretch limo was an invention to differentiate it from the ordinary motorcars,to add the ?X factor? to it, in order to lure in the wealthier clients whowanted to set themselves apart from the masses.

California, the home of Hollywood, soon got caught up in the limo fever like all otherUS states. The people in the film industry in Hollywood were quick to realize the potential of a stretchlimo to conveniently carry film sets, make-up crew and many other items. Theactors were only too happy to be carried in a limo as when they stepped uponthe red carpet from the back seat of a stylish limo, it immediately increasedtheir glamour quotient. The music bands led by Glenn Miller andBenny Goodman started using stretch limos to carry their band members andequipments. In other words, limos became a status symbol for all wealthy andglamorous people in the US.

Some American entrepreneurssaw in this trend, a golden opportunity to cash in the roaring popularity ofthe car by renting them to common people in cities like New York and Los Angeles. It proved a huge success as limousines providedpeople with comfort and novelty, not to mention the electrifying sense ofsuperiority as they step down a beautiful limo to encounter dropped jaws andenvious gazes of bystanders. It proved to be equally popular with businessmenwho liked the privacy of the separate passenger compartment. The limo industry,which encompasses the manufacturers, the coachbuilders, car sellers and therental services, have never looked back.