One day about four years ago, John Manoogian, then the director of Cadillac’s design studio, asked Draganel Magda, a senior designer, if he would like to work on a special project. The assignment? Working on the new presidential limousine.

Magda, who goes by the name of Dan, had helped to design the original Saturn lineup and the fifth-generation Corvette since joining General Motors in 1985. But the presidential limousine, the debut of which coincided with the administration of President Barack Obama, would be his chance to make a mark on history.

It would also be a singular opportunity for a man of Romanian ethnicity who was born in Ecka, Yugoslavia, in 1956. (Today, the town is in Serbia.) Wanting to escape Communism, Magda’s father made his way to Windsor, Ontario. Dan was 10 years old when the family moved across the river to Detroit.

“I always wanted to be a car designer,” said Magda, who lives in Lima Township. He prepared for the design profession by earning degrees at Wayne State University and Center for Creative Studies in Detroit.

Dreaming of the ultimate expression of the Cadillac Sixteen concept car of 2003, which had dazzled those who attended the North American International Auto Show, Magda told Manoogian he would indeed like to work on the presidential car.

“That was before I knew what I was getting into,” he kidded recently.

The old limo was based on the Cadillac DTS, and the Secret Service—to whose specifications the new one would adhere—wanted to stay with the existing “greenhouse”—that is, the roof, support pillars and windows. The glass in the carryover structure is several inches thick.

Reality dictated the design process, and Magda found himself looking in the Cadillac parts bin for lighting units. No matter what, the limo would have to meet federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards. And besides, the expense of creating special lighting would be prohibitive.

He felt the Escalade headlamps would give the limo the right proportions and liked the height of the STS tail lamps.

“The whole challenge was to blend in between,” he said. Many of the Escalade’s front surfaces were utilized. “The digital sculptors kind of cut and pasted.”

Here it should be noted that details about the limo’s underpinnings were never made public, but it was widely believed that GM’s largest and most heavy-duty SUV platform and powertrain were used. Magda guesses that, because of their size, body panels were made of composite material.

The secrecy was so comprehensive that not even he knew what would go under the body that his team designed. Working in a small basement studio by the company’s wind tunnel, his biggest challenge was doing all the design work at the three-eighths scale-model stage. (A full-size clay model would have been impossible to hide.) This meant he had to be extremely meticulous before the scale model was measured by laser and the math was given to the digital sculptors.

“Any little wiggle or mistake would be magnified,” he said.

The limo’s front grille was another special challenge. The Sixteen’s grille was used as a starting point, but all its aspects had to be stretched and spaced out.

Because the cleanliness of the design was always a priority, Magda resisted the Secret Service’s idea of putting red and blue strobe lights into the grille because he thought it looked “cluttered.” The strobes ended up being integrated into the fog lamps.

Gregg Merksamer, an expert on presidential cars, wrote about the new limo for the New York Times after photos of the prototype emerged in 2008. He said he finds the Obama limo “sleeker and more authoritative than the previous one, as sleek as you can make a car with pillars that thick by necessity.”

The sheer size of the limo is an obstacle to beauty. Merksamer paid $130 for 1/43 scale model but says that even in that scale, the model is relatively huge. “I don’t know if there’s really been a beautiful presidential limo since the 1993 Clinton car—and the last one before that was Kennedy’s [Lincoln] X100 before it was armored.”

Magda has never seen the completely finished result of his work. But he did go to a prototyping shop in a Detroit suburb and saw the same test “mule” that was likely the same car that appeared in spy photos, including that which accompanied Merksamer’s Times story.

“I was overwhelmed by the size and scale of it,” Magda said. “It just has a very intimidating presence.”

Magda was let go by GM in September 2009 as part of the company’s downsizing efforts. After a difficult period, he recently landed a job as a designer at ASC, Inc., in Southgate.

“The job is pretty fun and will allow me to work on a variety of stuff, not just cars,” he wrote in a e-mail. “I'm glad to be working on something in my trained profession.”