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Former White House Gardener Selling Hillary Clinton’s ‘Old Lady’ Car

Former first lady has not driven since 1996

Hillary Clinton
AP
April 11, 2016

Mike Lawn, a former White House gardener from Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, is selling Hillary Clinton’s 1986 Oldsmobile Cutlass, which his daughter described as an "old lady’s car."

Lawn, who worked as a gardener at the White House for nearly three decades, successfully bid on the vehicle when the Clintons offered it up to White House residence staff for auction in 2000, according to The Evening Sun. He originally intended to hand the vehicle off to his daughter when she became eligible to drive, but she objected to the car when he showed it to her after acquiring it.

"She said it looked like an old lady’s car," Lawn told the local publication. "She didn’t know why it had cranks in the windows."

The car has been rarely used in the 16 years since Lawn bought it. He said the vehicle had slightly more than 29,000 miles on it when he purchased it and has about 30,000 today.

"I’m ready to have it go down the road. It’s time. We’ve had it too long," his wife, Joyce, told the Sun.

Lawn believes that the car, which has Arkansas license plates and a 1990 "Clinton for Governor" sticker positioned on the windshield, was the last that Hillary Clinton, who is 68, drove. The former first lady admitted in 2014 that the last time she drove a car herself was 1996.

"I remember it very well," Clinton, now a Democratic presidential candidate, said during a speech at the National Automobile Dealers Association in January 2014. "Unfortunately, so does the Secret Service, which is why I haven’t driven since then."

Lawn said that former president and his wife brought the car directly from the Arkansas governor’s mansion when they moved into the White House in the early 1990s. The vehicle was parked on the White House grounds for the Clintons’ eight years in the White House and was only occasionally moved, he said.

Lawn said that he has gotten a "few bites, but nothing too over the top" on the vehicle early on in the bidding process. His wife contacted the Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock, Arkansas, about purchasing the vehicle, but they showed no interest.