Vehicles of Power

Vehicles of power – secret, inaccessible, obscure

We have exhibits in our collection that carried important, and sometimes the most important, figures on their couches. A limousine – regular, extended or armored – is still synonymous with power.

Limousines for Soviet leaders were always designed with flair. Most of them were meticulously copied on the model of their American counterparts, but with distinctive Soviet clumsy styling. Primacy among limousines was led by the Zi³, next to which other cars look like toys (did you know that in the parking lot it occupies exactly three times the surface area of a good old Maluch?).

The 41045 on display at the museum comes from service during the reign of Mikhail Gorbachev. Staying with the leaders of the early 1990s – Lech Walesa drove an extended and armored limousine based on a Volvo 760. Such is stationed in our museum. It was also used later by Prime Minister Hanna Suchocka and earlier by President Wojciech Jaruzelski. The extended and armored limousine was purchased by the Government Protection Bureau back in 1986.

Surely you have heard the name Mercedes Adenauer. Well, for the luxury limousine designated as model 300, the nickname „Adenauer” was given after the car became the representative vehicle of Chancellor Konrad Adenauer. The future leader himself identified this model as a car worthy of power when he visited the 1951 auto show and met Mercedes’ most prestigious limousine making its debut.

In Poland, the British Humber Super Snipe was associated primarily with the vehicles of ministers during the time of „eternal” Prime Minister Jozef Cyrankiewicz. But the limousine presented in the collection has a more graceful past. Well, it was on the ministry of the Primate of Poland Stefan Wyszynski.

MUSEUM COLLECTIONS

The collection of the Automotive Museum contains 250 exhibits presented in two manor buildings. For ease of visiting, the layout of the exhibition has been divided according to the countries represented by the cars.