---
title: "Please, Look at This Socialist Limousine"
description: "Nothing says “egalitarianism” like a 3-ton luxury car."
date: "2015-09-30"
modified: "2015-09-30"
authors:
  - name: "Ben Keeshin"
    link: "https://www.thedrive.com/authors/ben-keeshin"
url: "https://www.thedrive.com/vintage/362/please-look-at-this-socialist-limousine"
categories:
  - "Culture"
  - "History"
  - "News"
---

# Please, Look at This Socialist Limousine

![](<https://www.thedrive.com/wp-content/uploads/images-by-url-td/content/archive-images/092915_nonseqzil_hero_1920.jpg>)
*\<em\>www.thedrive.com</em>*

For the first time in a decade, Vladimir Putin is speaking before the United Nations General assembly, which means Russia’s manliest citizen is in New York. Bears and tigers of the Bronx Zoo, take cover: This man has a shirt, and he’s prepared to doff it and straddle you.

When Putin isn’t addressing the UN or elevating machismo to new heights, he’s likely riding in a large black car. Now, that means an armored Mercedes S-Class limousine. But back before the collapse of the U.S.S.R.—western goods were forbidden, Levis were gold—high-ranking members of the *politbureau* traveled special *politbureau*-only lanes in ZiL limousines, big executive town cars built in Moscow.

For all the anti-Capitalist propaganda circulating in 1967 (matched in vigor only by America’s contemporary anti-Communist propaganda), the Zil-114 pictured sure does have an indulgent, Yankee look, no? The nose is Chrysler Imperial, the flanks Lincoln Continental and the engine, a 7-liter pushrod V8, pumps out 300 horsepower. Sounds like a classic American recipe. Just, you know, stamped with iron from Magnitogorsk and not Pittsburgh.

Today, Putin’s bloviating is just that; there’s one superpower, and its leader [rides in a Cadillac](<https://www.thedrive.com/article/281/president-obama-and-pope-francis-meet-compare-cars-a-blow-by-blow-account>). During the Sixties, that wasn’t the case. And, in the shadow of an Orthodox church, black paint shining and wheels tracking a skiff of December snow, this Zil is menacing, pastiche or not.

A raised Stoli to the Zil, a symbol of international power dynamics’ past.

## Author
Ben Keeshin is a former staff writer for Maxim, and before that, contributed writing to the digital sides of Road & Track and Vanity Fair.

### Author social links  
[Twitter](<https://twitter.com/BnKshn>)