494

1966. Italy. First owner Auto Export Mosca, Rome (delivered April 4, 1966). Red/red. This is probably the only Soviet Quattroporte. Said to be offered to Brezhnev by the Italian communist party in 1968 to appease him of their sympathy with the Czekoslovakian revolutionaries, but the date of first delivery and the first owner (Auto Export Mosca was owned by the SU) make this a legend. The car was red inside and out. Brezhnev wasn‘t really that fond of red, so he had it painted blue. And maybe it wasn‘t even a gift, but commissioned by Brezhnev himself, via the Italian communists... Later, the car came to Estonia where it was in use by a security service owned by former KGB men, ending up in Riga (Latvia), where it was exposed in a museum. It was spotted there 1988 at a gathering of vintage cars. I talked to the owner in 1991 who had it from a Finnish friend, offering it at 15 000 DM. Condition was described as good, some rust in the wheel arches. Hubcaps, Maserati sign and cigarette lighter missing (the hard time spent in the museum, probably...). But according to an article in Austrian „auto revue“, the car was sitting outside from 1990 until 1994, in the hands of Finnish customs which confiscated it for unpaid duties. 1994 it was sold at auction to Pennti Puranen, Rautalampi, Finland, who, still according to „auto revue“, claimed to have „ended the auction with a 61 000 Finnmark (10 000 EUR) bid“. Mr. Puranen restored the car, claiming the car had only 9000 kms on the clock. Of course the car never had papers indicating Brezhnev as owner, as all those cars (Brezhnev loved cars, he had, among others, a Citroën SM, a Cadillac Eldorado, a Mercedes 450 SLC) were registered in the government‘s fleet. Brezhnev wasn‘t a very skillful driver, it seems he had quite a lot of accidents, one with a Rolls Royce Siver Shadow, the remnants of which can still be seen at the Riga automobile museum, with a Brezhnev mannequin at the wheel. 494 sports a standard holder on the left hand side... but this is surely a later addition, as all those fancy cars were never shown in public, on the contrary, the government tried to hide Brezhnev‘s capitalist hobby from the common people. So why would his presence be announced by a flag?