Wouldn’t it be great if there was some kind of law to keep distracted, angry, old-aged yet child-like drivers off our roads?
Well, in America there is, but sadly it only applies to Presidents, and former Presidents, which means we can all at least enjoy the schadenfreude of imagining the moment when the Idiot in Chief, Donald Trump, was informed that he’s not allowed to drive his snazzy, otiose car collection any more.
Better yet, he’ll never be allowed to drive any of his cars, ever again, for as long as the Devil allows him to live.
That’s right, as incredible as it seems, Americans treat their Presidents so much like royalty (the Queen is allowed to drive on public roads, strangely, and she doesn’t need a licence to do so), even when they've become senile old fools, like Ronald Reagan, or when they’ve retired from the job and yet are still provided with Secret Service protection in perpetuity. Can the president drive himself? The answer is no.
Hillary Clinton recently revealed that she hasn’t driven a car for 20 years, while her husband, Pants Down Bill Clinton, says that only being allowed to use the back seat of any vehicle is one of the biggest drawbacks of being the (former) leader of the free world.
Hillary Clinton recently revealed that she hasn’t driven a car for 20 years.
Why can't the president drive? According to Mickey Nelson, who was the Secret Service’s assistant director of protective operations for 29 years, until his retirement in 2012, it’s not so much a law as a strictly enforced policy.
"For the most part, the Secret Service's preference would be to drive the former presidents at all times," he said.
The reason, essentially, is that driving is dangerous and Presidents, and former Presidents, just aren’t good enough at it. Because the threat to US leaders is ever-present, it’s seen as safer for them to be driven by agents who are trained in evasive and defensive driving manoeuvres.
Strangely, the policy dates back to a President who died in a car, but was nowhere near the steering wheel at the time.
"The critical moment was when JFK was assassinated," says H.W. Brands, a presidential historian.
As such, Lyndon B Johnson goes down in history as the last president ever to drive himself on public roads, which he used to do a bit of, to and from his ranch in Texas Hill Country.
“Once you become president, you don't even have to stop for red lights," Brands added. "And if it looks like traffic's too bad, you just take a helicopter.”
Hillary Clinton had her right to drive taken away in 2008, when she was in the running to be a presidential candidate, but she’s been inside her husband’s bubble since he won the presidency in 1992.
"One of the regrets I have about public life is that I can't drive anymore," Hillary Clinton told the National Automobile Dealers Association. Bill echoed the sentiment in an appearance on Ellen in 2012, pointing out that he always demands to drive a cart when playing golf, because it’s the only time he’s allowed to touch a steering wheel.
Similarly, acknowledged idiot George W Bush recently told Jay Leno he hadn’t driven on public roads for nearly 25 yeas, although he was allowed to drive his own Ford F150 pick-up truck on his Texas ranch, until he auctioned that car for charity, raising an inexplicable $300,000.
Similarly, the late Ronald Reagan railed against his driving ban by piloting a pair of old four-wheel-drive Jeeps on his Santa Barbara ranch, scaring five kinds of hell out of his protection detail.
”He'd be in the driver's seat and I'd be in the passenger seat and I'd have a death grip," former Secret Service agent Stephen Colo said.
"Everything was completely open. No seatbelts. He’s driving and I'm thinking: ‘If we go over the edge, how I'm going to drag him out of that car?’”
It is incredible to think that these well-trained officers have to put their lives before men like Donald Trump, or Reagan, with one agent famously taking a bullet so save his life from an assassin in 1981.
Mind you, even their jobs aren’t as tough as whoever had the role of telling man-child Trump that he’d no longer be allowed to cruise around, gazing at himself in the rear-view mirrors of his car collection, formally known as the Donald Trump car collection. Maybe.
Trump, who has claimed to be worth as much as $US10 billion, but was revealed by Forbes magazine to be genuinely worth around $3.7bn, before he started cashing in on Presidential merchandise, has long been a fan of conspicuous consumption.
While he’s still allowed to enjoy his own golf courses, regularly, and drive his own golf carts, the cars he’ll no longer be enjoying include a 1956 Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud and a 2016 Phantom. Rumour has it that the Orange One regularly drove the Phantom himself, before his tilt at ruling the world began, and that he’s owned several bespoke Rollers over the years.
His luxury car collection has also reportedly included a Maybach, and a 2015 Mercedes-Benz S600, and a string of Cadillacs, including a pair of special-edition limousines that were named after him; the Trump Executive Series. Apparently they were not a sales success, as their sat-nav couldn’t decide which direction to go in and they kept setting themselves on fire, and exploding.
Trump also claimed to have been given a Cadillac Allante, a convertible V8, as a gift from the company, painted in his favourite colour - gold.
Some of the more surprisingly excellent cars in his collection have included a 1997 Lamborghini Diablo, which he called “one of the most famous supercars from the Italian manufacturer’s illustrious history”, just before he sold it.
Perhaps most credibly of all, though, Trump did own an SLR McLaren supercar, a machine of serious performance cred, desirability and collectability. No doubt he’s done someone a deal on that one by now, considering he can never drive it again.
While the 24-karat gold Orange County Chopper he also owned, a customised golden gift from Orange County Choppers, is hardly a surprise for someone as loud and gauche as him, the most genuinely baffling car he has reportedly owned is a Tesla Roadster.
The idea of a man who believes climate change is non-existent, and probably a Chinese plot, buying a zero-emission vehicle seems a little hard to believe, as does the idea of him climbing in and out of one, but apparently it’s true.
Perhaps Elon Musk, who was briefly a part of the President’s council of Actually Smart People until he quit in disgust earlier this year at Trump’s decision to pull the US out of the Paris agreement on climate change, talked him into it.
For now, then, the world’s most prolific and dangerous liar will have to put up with being driven around in the presidential state car, which is also known as The Beast, Limousine One or Cadillac One.
A truly unique vehicle, built on a medium-duty Cadillac-truck platform, The Beast is heavily armoured and hermetically sealed (in case of chemical attack), and allegedly uses an 8.1-litre V8 to drown out the sound of Trump talking rubbish.
Details are scant, and unofficial, but it’s suggested the presidential car might weigh as much as 9000kg, which means it can barely crack 100km/h, and uses a Texas-sized amount of fuel.
The doors have no keyholes, apparently, and must be opened using a secret method known only to the agents who look after the President. Its bullet-proof glass is more than 130mm thick, and only the driver’s window can open (to pay tolls, incredibly), and it is rumoured to feature armaments including rocket-propelled grenades, a tear-gas cannon, pump-action shotguns and infrared smoke-grenades.
The doors are 200mm thick and on board at all times are two pints of the President’s blood type, just in case.
If all this sounds slightly ridiculous, and absurdly expensive, then consider that the US apparently maintains around 12 copies of the current state car, and that any of those that are decommissioned are dismantled and destroyed with the help of the Secret Service, to make sure their various secrets are not discovered.
Estimates of the cost of each of these vehicles vary widely, with the low end at $US300,000 and the higher guesses in excess of $US1.5 million.
It’s good to know that President Trump is in such safe hands. What would we do without him?
Which one of Trump's cars would you like to own? Let us know in the comments.
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