Let's go the loooooong way round

Cocktail in hand, sunk deep in shag pile, Simon O'Hagan stretches a point and samples life in a limo

THEY'RE over-long, over the top and over here. But for a night out on the town, they're the only thing to be seen in... the American stretch limo.

At up to 63ft in length, these monsters of manicured motoring, with their darkened windows, boomerang TV aerials and gleaming black, white or silver livery are bringing a touch of Manhattan to the streets of London. And their popularity is increasing all the time.

While they had always attracted the odd pop or movie star passenger, the core market for limo hire used to be businessmen and foreign dignitaries, for whom the preferred mode of transport is still a Queen Mum-style Daimler, or perhaps the more recently introduced six-door stretch Mercedes.

But the new wave of the much flashier American stretch limos - mainly Lincolns but with a few Cadillacs fighting for road space as well - has attracted a very different set of customers.

"They're the up and coming thing," says Russell Finch, who hires out a stretch Lincoln in Chigwell, Essex. "They appeal to a much younger crowd, people out to impress. Maybe a guy who wants to propose to his girlfriend in one. They're particularly popular for hen nights."

Given the number of passengers they can carry - the biggest cars seat 12 on a leather-upholstered horseshoe sofa - you don't have to be super- rich to enjoy their advantages. Average charges are pounds 50 an hour for a minimum of four hours, so an evening's cruising could cost as little as pounds 16 a head. Plus whatever the cocktail bar bill comes to.

American stretch limos also tend to be cheaper to buy than the more staid European models. Nazir Ahmed, of UK Chauffeurs, based at Marble Arch, says his firm has just paid pounds 65,000 for a new stretch Mercedes, and $60,000 (about pounds 40,000) for a stretch Lincoln from the States. "They're luxurious, good-looking and roomy. They seem to appeal to the showbiz crowd. We get a lot of custom from people in the music industry."

That's what Neil Dawson, who runs the City of London Chauffeur-Driven Car Hire firm, discovered when, a few months ago, he added a "presidential" stretch Lincoln (price pounds 55,000) to his fleet of limos. Customers have included Eddie Izzard, Pierce Brosnan and Eric Clapton, and the car served as a decoy when Leonardo DiCaprio was in London two weeks ago. "I'd been getting a lot of enquiries, and realised it was time to make the investment," Mr Dawson said.

Driving these cars isn't easy, and it's made worse by the narrowness of some London streets. "With so much double-parking it's impossible to get them where you want to go," Mr Ahmed says. "Naturally people want to visit Soho, but you try getting one of those things up Wardour Street on a Friday night."

Not everyone in the luxury car hire business is taken with the trend. "You do get the odd difficulty when you find people think they can pay cash on the night," says John Cohen, of the up-market Carriage House Tartan Group. "We only take credit card bookings in advance." His prices reflect that: pounds 250 for three hours' hire. But with the summer approaching, Mr Cohen expects his air-conditioned stretch limos to do good business.

Another limo firm boss, who did not want to be named, is very disparaging of the new market. "It's just the beer and skittles crowd," he says.

The only concession he has made is a Transit-style "day van" which may not look glamorous from the outside but inside has the requisite TV and cocktail cabinet, seats that convert into a bed, and huge luggage space. It's aimed firmly at corporate clients, "businessmen who might want one for a golfing tour of Scotland. But then maybe I've got it wrong. Maybe I should be hiring out stretch limos." Bandwagons don't come much sleeker.