Kim Jong Il Funeral Car (luxury, 2011, German, purchase)
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I swear, at first glance on the CNN website, I thought that it looked like a Cadillac, but then I clicked on the article and it's obviously not a Cadillac. My first guess is that it's a Soviet ZiL limousine, but I'm not quite sure. The grille & headlights look just a little bit off for it to be a ZiL, so then I thought that maybe it's a Chinese model based on the ZiL? A Chinese model that was made primarily for Party bosses?
A Zil?
Nope!
A Chinese model, based on the Zil?
No again.
A Cadillac? Definitely not!
The car is clearly an American-made Lincoln, of the fifth generation, which was manufactured from 1970-79. While it has been stretched by an after-market company, the roof line, the opera window inset into the roof, the front fenders, and the grill/headlight area all mark this as a Lincoln of that era--without any doubt. Perhaps someone who is particularly knowledgeable about that marque can nail down the exact model year of this Lincoln.
I guess that you haven't been in the US very long if you don't recognize a Lincoln from that era!
Looks like they have a whole fleet of them:
http://media.star-telegram.com/smedia/2011/12/28/04/42/667-9TPYh.St.55.jpg (broken link)
It's a 70's Lincoln Continental sedan, coachbuilt into a limo by a third party. I've seen them referred to as 1975 Moloney stretches. The NK gov't probably ordered a number of them and then shipped them from the US to a foreign country that didn't have a trade embargo on, and then back to NK.
Moloney is a defunct company located in Schaumburg, IL that was once quite popular for luxury coaches (stretched, modified Lincolns, Caddys, etc). Link to some info on the company: Daves Classic Limousine Pictures
Ironically, NK's propoganda machine teaches that Japan is the world's #1 aggressor and puppetmaster, and that the evil US is its apelike enforcer. The NK's appear to have removed most of the emblems on them; this isn't too surprising. The Pyongyang subway uses old East German running stock, and I recall reading an account of a trip to Pyongyang written by an American in which a German on the tour pointed out that the cars still had the plaque of the East German factory that made it, and their tour guide forcefully insisted that the carriage was North Korean manufacture. These cars have been in the fleet since Kim Il Sung's reign, and were apparently his cars of choice - I recall having seen a photo of Kim Jong Il and Kim Il Sung together surveying military maneuvers, and one of them was in the background... If it was ever mentioned, I'm sure that the North Koreans were told they were made locally.
Look at this interior. If it was good enough for America's finest pimps, it was good enough for NK's most discerning dictator...
Wow. I ALMOST thought it was a Lincoln, but ZiLs looked so similar, even I was fooled. I'm flabbergasted. Where do they get parts? How do they keep them running? Amazing.
And I find it truly ironic that the "Great Leader" of the last Stalinist dictatorship on the planet took his final journey on top of......an American car product of the capitalist Ford Motor Co.
What an honor for Ford. Wonder what they're thinking of in Detroit.
I just saw a show last night on North Korea. How he dictated that everything had to be Korean made in country, and after he died you see this and hear of all the other things he had that we probably made. I didn't know of all the prison camps he kept people in, 23 of them I think with 50,000+ people in each one, people put there for doing almost nothing. Just say the wrong thing, or a hint of anything against the Gov. and you are sent there.
One guard that defected to SK was on the show talking, he was told to treat prisioners as non people. They can kill you at anytime for doing little or nothing. You get caught doing something, even minor, you and ALL your family and relatives go to prison with you, and you will die there. They treat people like this, yet the people go nuts for him when he dies.
It's been coming out on a lot of blogs that the cars are indeed 1970's era Lincoln's. Apparently Kim Jong Il's dad, Kim Il Sung, had a softspot for them and had them imported. These same cars were used in the father's funeral as well.
As for how they keep them running, North Korea has a massive blackmarket operation that gets the ruling class whatever they want/need through third party channels that is then imported through countries with normalized trade relations or just outright smuggled. Kim loved French wine and American cinema and reportedly had over 20,000 movies in his personal collection. He used to send his chef around the world to purchase foreign delicacies and Kim also had $4 billion in assets deposited into European banks in case he ever needed to flee. Given that kind of stuff, I'm sure he was more than capable of finding parts for a 1975 Lincoln, lol.
I just saw a show last night on North Korea. How he dictated that everything had to be Korean made in country, and after he died you see this and hear of all the other things he had that we probably made. I didn't know of all the prison camps he kept people in, 23 of them I think with 50,000+ people in each one, people put there for doing almost nothing. Just say the wrong thing, or a hint of anything against the Gov. and you are sent there.
One guard that defected to SK was on the show talking, he was told to treat prisioners as non people. They can kill you at anytime for doing little or nothing. You get caught doing something, even minor, you and ALL your family and relatives go to prison with you, and you will die there. They treat people like this, yet the people go nuts for him when he dies.
The going nuts for him when he dies has been analyzed to be one of two things:
1. The people of North Korea are so isolated, spoonfed information and ingrained into the cult of personality around Kim Jong Il that they truly believed that he was a great leader and savior of their country, sort of a George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, FDR and Jesus Christ all rolled into one.
2. The mourning is just part of the repression of the regime. The people are making such a scene out of it as a way to demonstrate their loyalty to the regime. They don't want people to question why they weren't upset enough over "Dear Leaders" death, so they turn it into a competitive spectacle.
My first thought was either old Mercury or old Lincoln. Obviously these guys nailed it.
North Korea... What a sad, pathetic nation that has been raped and pillaged by a Communist dictator. May he rot in hell.
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