Obama's 'Bus Force One' Rolls Through U.S. > Secret Service says $1.1 million bus provides security, savings.

If the presidential limousine is known as "the beast," the new official tour bus could be called "the behemoth."

The Secret Service is trucking President Obama and his senior staff through the Midwest this week on an imposing jet-black coach, outfitted with top-notch security and communications equipment to keep its occupants safe.

The White House says the $1.1 million bus, and its accompanying motorcade of more than two dozen vehicles, allows the president to visit "real people in real places" that wouldn't otherwise be easily accessible. Obama began the three-day trip in Minnesota and ends in Illinois Wednesday.

Neither the Secret Service nor Hemphill Brothers Co., the Nashville, Tenn.-based company that built the bus, would comment on the "security additions" or what it's like inside as it rumbles along rural roads.

But some of Obama's travel companions, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the interior is "subdued," and that the president has been using the front seating area, which has two chairs and a sofa, for some parts of his travel and two other groupings of four chairs farther back in the bus for others. Read More

AP President Obama's motorcade makes its way through Peosta, Iowa, en route to the Rural Economic Forum at the Northeast Iowa Community College

WASHINGTON -- President Obama is barnstorming the heartland to boost U.S. jobs in a taxpayer-financed luxury bus the government had custom built -- in Canada, The New York Post has learned. 

The $1.1 million vehicle, one of two that Quebec-based Prevost sold the government, has been tricked out by the Secret Service with state-of-the-art security features and creature comforts. 

It's a VIP H3-45 model, the company's top of the line, and is used by major traveling rock bands. 

"That's the more luxurious model," Christine Garant of Prevost told The Post. 

"When we have the Country Music Awards, we sometimes see a lot of them," she said, noting that Kid Rock, David Lee Roth and Kenny Rogers also have owned them. 

Obama's new ride is equipped to carry all the baggage a president needs -- including the "football" that allows him to remotely control U.S. nuclear weapons. 

Click here to continue reading at The New York Post.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/08/17/obamas-state-art-tour-bus-made-in-canada/#ixzz1VJHgWxHn