Russian Government cars fail to sell
Published April 14th, 2006
Armored limousines that ferried former Soviet leaders Leonid Brezhnev and Mikhail Gorbachev during the Cold War failed to attract a single bidder at an auction in Moscow yesterday organized by Sotheby’s Holdings Inc.
“No one wanted the car,” said Boris Lakhmetkin, owner of Brezhnev’s 1973 Nissan President, a gift from a Japanese minister who spied for the KGB. “I am very surprised,” Lakhmetkin, 58, said in a telephone interview in Moscow today.
Sotheby’s, the world’s No. 2 auctioneer, put a starting price of $145,000 on the Brezhnev mobile and $450,000 on the 1998 armored ZIL limo used by Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin, according to the cars’ owners. The ZIL is “one of the most secure cars in the world,” Sotheby’s said in its program.
Soviet designers differed from their U.S. counterparts in building and refitting limousines for the Communist Party elite. Moscow-based ZIL, which created an armored capsule and then built a car around it, made just 13 machines like Gorbachev’s, one a year, said Vladimir Vovnyanko, deputy head of Molotov Garage. The ZIL can’t be flipped with explosives, Sotheby’s said.
The sale, at the Super Car and Bike exhibition at Moscow’s ExpoCenter, included about 50 vehicles ranging from a $33,600 1959 BMW Isetta mini to an $825,000 Koenigsegg CC 2002 sports car. Sotheby’s valued Brezhnev’s sedan at between $336,000 and $384,000 and Gorbachev’s ZIL at between $450,000 and $500,000.
