What is the common thread that draws South Africans of all colours, creeds and credulities together? Is it their shared past, their hope for the future, their love of alliterating the letter c? No, it’s the fact that they all drive like dicks.
Okay, not all. Just almost all. In fact, there are so many dicks on our roads, it’s impossible to differentiate among them. Until now, that is. Ladies, gentlemen and racist little girls, as the ANC Youth League says when addressing a gathering, I give you — the £1million Dartz Prombron Monaco Red Diamond Edition Armoured Car SUV.
This Russian-built baby is produced by RussoBaltique, the same company that built armoured vehicles for Tsar Nicholas, Vladimir Lenin, S’bu Ndebele and Leon Trotsky. (Only three of these people were in fact customers. Reader, can you guess who the odd man out is?) The vehicle comes with gold-plated bulletproof windows and a tungsten exhaust. The gauges are encrusted with diamonds and rubies, and the exterior has a Kevlar coating. And best of all, the seats are made out of whale-penis leather. Yep, finally we have an answer to that age-old question: what do you give the dick who has everything? That’s right — his very own dick to sit on.
Now I’m aware that this is a fantastic advertising ploy. After all, agency creatives and car manufacturers have long known that a car is an extension of a man’s penis, or in the case of politicians, a non-gendered extension of their general quality of being dicks. So what better selling point than seats made out of whale-penis leather? They don’t come bigger than that (ahem).
The website for the Dartz Prombron Monaco Red Diamond Edition Armoured Car (I know — it’s a bit of a mouthful) says the whale-penis leather is inspired by the bar stools in Aristotle Onassis’ yacht, which were covered in whale foreskin. Phew, talk about the Greek persuasion. But whereas the rest of big Ari’s yacht, the Christina O, could conceivably be described as ”stylish”, the Dartz Dickmobile can only be described as ‘the end of European civilisation as we know it.”
Now I’m aware that writing about this is not responsible journalism. Many politicians read the Mail & Guardian to find out what they got caught doing this week, and pointing them in the general direction of the Dickmobile is like waving a red flag to a taxpayer-subsidised bullshitter. I can already hear the saliva running down the gutters of Parliament.
And matters aren’t helped by the fact that the Dartz Dickmobile comes with three bottles of Russo-Baltique, the vodka brand the company created this year to mark 100 years of bringing appallingly bad taste to the world.
Apparently, a bottle sold for £790 000 last year. According to the company website, it’s not meant to be drunk — instead it should be displayed as art. Art! Oh, the humanity. That’s like calling Vladimir Putin a peacekeeper.
The vodka flask is a replica of the radiator guard used for the Russo-Baltique cars, and it’s made from gold coins minted between 1908 and 1912. The flask cap is made from white and yellow gold and contains a diamond-encrusted replica of the Russian Imperial Eagle. And the bottle itself is made of bulletproof glass 30cm thick.
Why on god’s increasingly less green earth (hello Hummer, the free world’s version of the Dartz Dickmobile) would you need a vodka bottle to be bulletproof? In fact, why would you need a £1-million luxury armoured car in the first place? The website has some convincing arguments, actually:
”Because it’s not enough to just be World Most Expensive Armored Car! World Strongest Armored Car! World Most Luxury Armored Car! Armored Car which was driven and used by Russian Tzar Nikolai II. Armored Car which was a tribune for new commy Tzar Lenin at 1917! Armored Car which was last soviet car of Trozky.
”They Drive It! You — can!
”World Oldest Armored car brand which is reincarnated in ÃœberLuxury status and returns to shoock this World again.
”This unique car unit limo luxury and tank strength, supercar power and spaceship electronic.
”Drive it! Drive Safe! Drive Fast! Drive Proud!”
Ah. The nice thing about life, if by nice you mean depressing, is that there’s always somebody out there more corrupt, more disgusting, and/or more venal than our own homegrown mob. What are a few luxury Mercs and Beemers compared to the Dartz Dickmobile? Why, we’re practically saints.
But hopefully, if all this isn’t some sort of internet hoax, we’ll be able to get the Dickmobile in Africa in the future, possibly as some sort of Arms Deal package. After all, the company is, a spokesperson informed the Mail Online, ”launching a version of this new model in 2012, just for Latin America.
”This will commemorate the fact that Trotsky was killed in Mexico with an ice pick in 1940. As such, the Latin version will come with a gold ice axe to mark this fact.” Now that’s cool. Perhaps a South African version can come with a small golden bed, to commemorate the Commies’ favourite SA hiding place of the 80s.
(Thanks to @KevinMcCallum for the link)
Chris Roper is the editor of the Mail & Guardian Online. Follow him on Twitter @chrisroperza
