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MINDING YOUR
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| THE WHEEL THING By Mike Ashley |
Motorcoach One, a ground-bound version of
Air Force One, has onlookers doing a double-take everywhere the 45-foot
bus goes.
It may not be a Boeing 747, but Motorcoach One has the look of a presidential vehicle. Its color scheme is identical to Air Force One's, and it sports an official-looking takeoff on the Presidential Seal. |
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"It comes back with a story
every time we send it out," says Bob Pounders, president of Richmond-based
Winn Transportation, which owns the unique tour bus. On one trip, police
blocked off traffic to let the bus pass at Dulles Airport. On another trip,
camera-wielding, foreign tourists surrounded the coach as it stopped to
let a group off at the Pentagon.
Motorcoach One is the brainchild of Pounders, who once served as chairman of an advertising and marketing committee for the United Motorcoaches Association. Back then, Bill Clinton and Al Gore were popularizing buses during their first presidential campaign. |
| As a marketing coup, Pounders planned to present them
with a two-foot model motor coach replica of Air Force One upon their election.
The association eventually abandoned the plan, and Pounders went back to
running the family business. But in 1997, he came up with the idea of Motorcoach
One.
"I had a dream one night of painting a full-size coach just like the model we had," he recalls. "So we ordered the biggest coach we could get from our manufacturer in Montreal -- higher, wider and longer than anything else they made." Now, for about $950 a day, passengers can travel in presidential style. There are 54 seats of power on the coach. The seats can face forward in the usual bus configuration or be adjusted so passengers face one another across tables. There's a swivel chair in the front, just like the president's on Air Force One, and there are two blue couches in the back. On the outside, Motorcoach One looks like the real thing, and the Winn staff doesn't do anything to dispel misperceptions about the vehicle. The motor coach captains (that's drivers to you and me) are instructed to respond politely to questions about the coach: "I'm sorry, we can't talk about that." "It doesn't say 'yes' and it doesn't say 'no,'" laughs Pounders. "Coming down the road, we get police cars that turn on their blue lights and then turn them off. They don't know whether to follow it or escort it. It gets a reaction wherever it goes."
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