Barack gets car stuck at Dublin Embassy; Presidential Limo should be high-riser

U.S. President Barack Obama got the latest, state-of-the-art Presidential Limosine in 2009, when GM produced a new version actually based not on a Cadillac unit-body, but on that of the GMC TopKick industrial-duty truck platform. But it's supposed to move and work like a limo, and not a truck, and not get caught stuck in a driveway.

But that's what happened to Barack's car as it got stuck while driving out of the U.S. Embassy in Dublin, Ireland, and after President Obama's successful trip to that country. This blogger's still surprised.

The President's limo has everything from a compartment that is protected by a door as heavy as that for a 757 airplane, tear-gas guns, run-flat, Kevlar-protected tires, and pump-action shotguns for defense. But, with all that, and more, it's shocking to learn that the suspension system wasn't designed to compensate for extreme changes in terrain.

And leave the President's Limo a sitting duck.

What happened was the car's wheelbase, at around 160-inches and developed to withstand bomb-blasts, is so long that the car wasn't high enough to clear the change in the ramp's direction - it failed to clear the bump, and the result was a loud, and embarrassing "clang."

The solution: the same lifts used on street high-rider cars, like the one I saw in Miami's South Beach during the week of Super Bowl XLI in 2007. That car was at least three-feet off the ground, and could clear the sand dunes if called on to do so.

While the President's Cadillac Limo doesn't need to get that high, some kind of hydraulic lift system should be installed in it, and it's a shame it wasn't there already.

America can put a man on the moon, but we can't make a high-rider Presidential Limo.

That's not right.

Stay tuned.