Automobiles in History and Politics

In 1905, President Theodore Roosevelt said he had ridden in a car only twice in his life and that was quite enough. His chauffeur had been stopped by a policeman on his second ride, going at the outrageous speed of ten mile per hour. Roosevelt declared he would never ride in a car again. He later became the first President to own a car and the first to drive one. The nation`s first speeder, by the way, was arrested in 1899 by a New York policeman riding a bicycle. The speeder was whizzing along at an amazing twelve miles per hour! In 1907, five years before becoming President of the United States, Woodrow Wilson warned the American citizens that the motorcar would "spread socialist feelings in this country." He, like Roosevelt, was forced to eat his words and think twice before he condemned anything again. In 1919, he bought a Model T Ford. In 1908, a U.S. Army study predicted that the automobile was unsuited for war. During World War I, however, the Allies commandeered all the taxis in Paris to rush their troops to the front lines, halting the German Army at the Marne. Meanwhile, in spite of their predictions, the Army was buying some cars for the brass, refusing to pay the state of New York a $2.00 license fee on the grounds that the U.S. Government was immune from taxation. Hiram Johnson was the first political candidate to put his campaign on motorized wheels in 1910. He drove his way right into the governor's mansion in California by covering the state in a car. Nearly every member of the Russian royal family had a Rolls-Royce. Czar Nicholas II had a matched pair of Rolls-Royce Silver Ghosts. Prince Feliks Yussupov, the Czar's nephew, owned a Silver Ghost which became part of history. Grigori Yefimovich Novykh, known as "Rasputin," arrived in St. Petersburg from Siberia about 1906. Rasputin means "debauched," an appropriate name for one who believes that salvation can only be gained by sinning. In spite of his amorality, Rasputin claimed to be a holy man with the power to heal. By superstition of the times and manipulation, he was able to accomplish improved health for several of the afflicted who came to him for help. Czarina Alexandra Feodorovna, whose son had hemophilia, in desperation to save the royal heir, sent for Rasputin after the court physicians had failed to help him. Rasputin held some emotional and mystic sessions with the boy and convinced Alexandra that he had cured him. Alexandra then turned to him more and more for advice concerning personal and even public matters. Using his hold over the Czarina, he gained influence over Czar Nicholas' decisions on affairs of state. Prince Yussupov was alarmed by Rasputin's meddling and conspired with four government officials who felt the same to do away with Rasputin. On December 29, 1916, these conspirators lured him to Moika Palace and fed him wine and cakes laced with cyanide. The poison either had no effect or took longer than the party could stand, so Yussupov shot him several times to shorten his suffering. They carried the body of Rasputin, bleeding but still alive, to Yussupov's Rolls-Royce, first wrapping him so that he would not stain the upholstery. Driving to the banks of the frozen Neva River, they dragged him from the car and dropped him through a hole in the ice. Rasputin went out in grand style: sitting on the back seat of a Rolls-Royce, which was driven by a prince of the realm. A year and a half later, the entire royal family was dead, murdered during the Communist Revolution. Lenin, the father of Communism, owned the very symbol of Capitalism, a Rolls-Royce. The fate of Yussupov's Rolls-Royce is unknown, but Lenin's is in the Moscow museum. That makes two Rolls-Royce automobiles in Russia at the present time, since the British Ambassador drives one. If you are interested in owning one of the grandest of the grand, the makers of Rolls have an elongated Silver Spur limousine on sale for only $185,000. Another automobile which played a major part in history is the Mercedes, which really doesn't seem to be a good token for political leaders. Germany's Kaiser Wilhelm had a chauffeur-driven Mercedes with an imperial eagle on the hood; World War I took away not only his handsome automobile, but also his empire. One war later, Adolph Hitler rode to defeat in a Mercedes limousine. Hitler had been so proud of his country's automobile that in 1939, when Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union signed their pact of non aggression, which neither nation honored, he gave a supercharged sports Mercedes roadster with a rumble seat to his good friend, Joseph Stalin. After Stalin died, his son sold the Mercedes to a Swede who later sold it to a man in Arizona. The Arizonan later offered it for the sale price of $775,000 but said he could be talked down to a measly $700,000. Shortly after Hitler killed himself (and then swam to South America), the chancellor of the new German Federal Republic, Mercedes-borne Konrad Adenauer, watched his country split in half. Emperor Hirohito of Japan also owned a red and black Mercedes before he came in last during WWII. The Mercedes is especially popular among the political elite in Africa, which the Swahili call "wabenzi," or men of "Mercedes-Benz." The Central African Republic's Emperor, Jean-Bedel Bokassa, was one such wabenzi, who had his country and his entire Mercedes fleet taken in a 1979 coup. Six years later, the wabenzi of Nigeria, President Alhaji Shihu Shagari, lost his office and impressive car in the same way. A group of middle-aged women in Togo fared much better than the men. Some decades ago, these ladies made night visits into Ghana to smuggle that country's fine cloth into Togo. Subsequently, they gained control over Togo's entire textile market, branching out into legal commercial enterprises and becoming millionaires many times over. They drive around Togo in their Mercedes limousines to check up on real estate holdings, restaurants, grocery stores, and various other ventures. When the Togolese President discovered that he did not have enough VIP vehicles to receive his visitors while hosting a conference of the African heads of state, he sent out a call for help to the "Mercedes Ladies." In a few hours, a whole procession of gleaming Mercedes automobiles drove up to assist the President. Clyde Champion Barrow, of Bonnie and Clyde fame, wrote a letter to Henry Ford in 1934, one month before Clyde and the cigar-smoking, gun-toting Bonnie were killed in a shoot-out with the police. Clyde stopped running from the federal authorities long enough to write what a "dandy car" Ford made. He wrote that "...For sustained speed and freedom from trouble the Ford has got every other car skinned and even if my business hasn't been strictly legal it don't hurt anything to tell you what a fine car you got..." In 1947, the very car that Clyde had so much affection for was sold at auction. It had been wrecked during the shoot-out and was bullet-ridden. Even so, it brought $175,000. When Gerald Ford became Vice President in 1973, he stated, "I am a Ford, not a Lincoln." Once he became President, he found himself to be a Ford in a Lincoln, since the Lincoln was the official automobile for the President, a tradition started by Calvin Coolidge in 1924. This tradition was upheld until Ronald Reagan expressed a fondness for the Cadillac. Automobiles, like wine, seem to become more costly with maturity and age. An Orlando auction in 1981 brought $350,000 for a 1936 Packard that had been purchased for about $2,000 when new. A 1936 Mercedes brought $421,000 in Los Angeles in 1979. One auto lover in Kansas has given 30,000 hours of labor to fine-tune and plate his 1920 Pierce Arrow with silver and gold. This automobile is insured with Lloyd's of London for $1,000,000!