ZIS-115

The ZIS-115 was an armoured version of the ZIS-110 limousine, designed and built especially for the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. Thirty-two were made between 1948 and 1949, and the design was based on the American 1942 Packard Super Eight. The car weighed over four tonnes, with windows of glass nearly eight centimetres thick that were raised by a hydraulic system. Its 6.0 litre straight-eight engine gave 140 hp and a top speed of 121 km/h. Stalin, wary of assassination, always rode in the rear seat between two armed bodyguards and often changed his route from his home at Kuntsevo to the Kremlin. He gave one to Mao Zedong, and in 1955 Nikita Khrushchev gave two to Josip Broz Tito. Later Soviet leaders kept using the armoured ZIS limousines for many years, Russian leaders occasionally used them as late as 1994, and several survive in private collections and museums.