01
Origins
The ZIL-4104 of 1978 was the final all-new Soviet state limousine: a 7.7-litre V8 leviathan developed with British styling consultancy input, built for Brezhnev's twilight years and every successor through the state's end. Armoured versions carried the leadership through the succession winters of Andropov and Chernenko; the fleet's maintenance rituals were state theatre in themselves, each car rebuilt between duties. Gorbachev rode 4104 derivatives to the summits that unwound the Cold War. Production continued in vestigial numbers into the Russian 1990s as ZIL itself declined toward closure. The 4104 thus closed a lineage begun under Stalin — the empire's own coachbuilding tradition, ending with the empire, both of them grand and neither sustainable.
Zil-115 · Pudelek · CC BY-SA 4.0
