Chariot of Choice: New Audi exhibit

Where JFK Meets the Queen and Khrushchev
Source: Audi AG


Audi Tradition opens a new special exhibition “Power and Splendour – Carriages for State Occasions” in the Audi museum mobile
Eleven cars in which monarchs and heads of state once rode
Starting on March 12, 2008, the Audi museum mobile is holding a special exhibition entitled “Power and Splendour – Carriages for State Occasions”. It consists of a cavalcade of eleven vehicles such as have never before been gathered together at one place in Germany until now. Audi Tradition has not restricted its choice to products from the company’s own history. Two undoubted highlights of the display are the cars used by the main protagonists of the Cold War: the heavily armoured ZIL 111 G in which Nikita Khrushchev rode and a Lincoln Continental in which John F. Kennedy is said to have been chauffeured.

The exhibition spans a period from antiquity to the present day. Ever since the invention of the wheel, kings and princes, presidents and other potentates have used carriages, coaches and later the automobile not only as transport but also to impress the people. These vehicles were chosen to emphasise or even exaggerate the owner’s status and to inspire respect bordering on veneration. The oldest goes back as far as the Bronze Age and is a replica of the Sun Wagon of Trundholm.

Visitors will learn that clearly defined preconditions had to be satisfied when a victorious Roman general rode triumphantly in his chariot through the cheering populace on his way to the Emperor’s palace. In the baroque period princes paraded their elevated status before the public in gilded carriages to imply their divine right to rule. Earlier, in the Middle Ages, the greatest leaders rode on horseback and only the peasants went about their affairs in primitive carts.

The exhibition concentrates, however, on the motor car. Audi’s history has contributed three examples used by heads of state. Gerhard Schrцder was the first German Chancellor to choose a car bearing the four-ring emblem for his official transport: an armoured Audi A8. But before the Second World War one of the makes that preceded Audi, namely the Horch, was popular in a number of countries. Visitors can see the Horch 400 dating from 1930 in which King Haakon VII of Norway rode, and also a Horch 830 BL with a very special history. French President Charles de Gaulle, when performing his duties as an army general after the Second World War, used this German car for almost ten years, including on many official occasions