Ten Facts About Presidential Inaugural Cars, Some Of Which Are Lies

It seems that today we, as a country, will be inaugurating a President. It's the same President we had before, so it should go pretty easily, seeing as how he already has all his stuff in the White House and all the radios preset with his chosen stations. Still, it's a big deal, since we only do this once every leap year or something like that, so it's worth taking the time to see how cars fit into the whole thing.

It turns out much of the inauguration takes place in a car's natural habitat, a road! The President will be travelling in a car on a road as he travels from the White House to the Capitol building, where he'll go in the sealed chamber of the Inaugurotron to be re-saturated with Presidential gamma-rays or whatever it is they do to re-Presidential him. I'm sure it'll be very exciting.

So, to commemorate this historic day, I've got a list here of ten Presidential Inaugural Facts About Cars, and half of these facts are the kind of facts that aren't true. You know, like what Creationists use to prove science things.

See if you can ID the fake ones in the comments! We'll have the answers tomorrow. Have fun!

1. The easiest way to drive a car that uses the same chassis as the current Presidential limo is to rent a GMC box truck from U-Haul.

2. A deal with the well-known taxi making company, Checker, to build the Presidential limo was scuttled by President Nixon in 1969 for fear of reminding the public of the scandal that prompted his famous Checkers speech.

3. President Warren G. Harding was the third president to have an official, government-owned car, and the first to ride to his inauguration in a car.

4. That car that Harding used for his inauguration was a Packard Twin-Six.

5. Assuming Presidential inaugural cars had to be American-built, it would have been possible for President Harding to have selected a Rolls-Royce instead.

6. If the Presidential car was a Bugatti Veyron, driven at top speed for the length of the parade route, the distance could be covered in right about 0.0079 seconds. That's not counting acceleration or braking time.

7. As a nod to the energy crisis, President Carter's inaugural ride was to have been a Florida-built electric Citicar, painted glossy black and specially prepared for the event. Unfortunately, a worker had neglected to recharge the car after practice runs, forcing Carter to take his now-famous walk from the Capitol to the White House.

8. Cars that have driven Presidents in inaugurations have been nicknamed The Beast, Sunshine Special, and The Flapjack Flyer.

9. Taft was the President that converted the White House stables into a garage, and the first to allocate an amount for the purchase of motor vehicles. Today, that amount would be just a couple hundred short of being able to buy a new Scion FR-S.

10. For Ronald Reagan's second inauguration in 1985, the plan was to use a ZIL limousine that had been presented as a gift to the President by Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev. Using the ZIL would have demonstrated the President's support of Gorbachev's Glasnost policies of openness, but a last-minute plea by White House Chief of Staff Howard Baker convinced the President to use the normal American-made Presidential limo.

UPDATE: I realized I made an error in one of the "true" ones, so now 60% are lies. Sorry, but, you know, carry on!