When you’re in the business of turning someone’s vision into a rolling dream come true, it can be tough saying no to a client. But, hey: If you’re business is stretching vehicles into limousines and the customer wants a hot tub in the back of his pickup truck, “no” is a socially responsible answer.

“We had to tell the guy, ‘It won’t drive,’ ” says Angela Donalson, director of marketing for Executive Coach Builders of Springfield, Mo.

Executive Coach, which was purchased in 1993 by David Bakare, has taken off under his control. The Nigerian immigrant, a computer sciences graduate of the University of Southern California, bought the company when it was turning out about a unit per week. In each of the past two years, it has completed conversions on between 500 and 600 units. Finished models run from $73,000 to $140,000 for the full complement of accessories.

Included in that lineup are party limousines, corporate limos, funeral coaches, stretch SUVs and even stretch Humvees, tricked out with everything from hand-finished real wood bars, paneling and consoles—no acrylic, no plastic—along with fiber-optic lighting, big-screen televisions and touch-screen modules for controlling the electronics, air conditioning and more.

The company’s growth has been driven by several factors, Donalson said. First, Bakare’s keen business sense. He positioned the company to produce stretch SUVs before demand for them exploded nationally, particularly with the Ford Navigator model.

“The introduction of the stretch SUV really blew things wide open for us” around 2003, Donalson said. “For about three or four years, it seems like that was all anyone wanted. There were so many limo operators opening, new startups, and they all wanted the best of the best. And that was the SUV.”

Bakare was rewarded for his entrepreneurial vision by becoming the nation’s leading builder of SUVs stretched to meet the exacting standards of Ford’s Qualified Vehicle Modifier program. Executive Coach stretches more QVM vehicles than all other certified coachbuilders combined.

Also keying the company’s growth has been Bakare’s push to expand into foreign markets. It now delivers conversion vehicles in China, Canada and England. “At that point, it was just add water and multiply,” Donalson said. “Demand was just crazy.”

Executive Coach produces its custom vehicles in a 100,000-square-foot facility and employs roughly 100 people who craft virtually every component of the finished model’s interior. Any coach builder, Donalson says, starts with the same basic product, so ECB sets itself apart with the finely detailed goodies that meet or exceed customer expectations.

“A lot of limo makers take a cookie-cutter approach,” Donalson says, but Executive Coach works with clients to make sure that individual desires are incorporated into the finished product. The company does conversion work for individual customers who bring their vehicles in, and it builds its own fleet of stretch vehicles for sale or export. On any given day, roughly two dozen finished models are on the lot for customers to assess, Donalson said.

Executive Coach’s business has been bolstered in recent years with the increased demand for party coaches, which almost always means an SUV that’s been stretched. An emerging product line, though, is the stretch bus.

The company usually will add as much as 165 inches—nearly 13 feet—to the length of a vehicle, which requires specialty brakes and other modifications to handle the additional vehicle weight involved, in addition to that of 10 or more passengers. It can even go up to 200 inches on a stretch Hummer.

The most unusual aspect of what Executive Coach does, says Donalson, is the ability of its craftsmen to tailor each job to client demands.

“You take these beautiful cars for granted sometimes, being so close to them,” she said. “But what amazes me is the forethought, the logistics that go into making it work. To see it going from two pieces of a chassis, then the welding and construction, to the wood being cut to make bar, the sanding, clear-coating, the hand-wiring fiber optics … All these people doing all this work, it’s just amazing, and it turns out to be a gorgeous piece of art.”