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[Mr. Linsky]

'At Funeral of Kim Jong-il, U.S.-Made Limos Stand Out'



By J. DAVID GOODMAN
12/29/11 The New York Times

Kim Jong-il hated the United States. But an American carried him to the grave.

The casket of Mr. Kim, the cultish North Korean leader, sat atop the roof of a polished masterpiece of American automotive grandeur: a mid-1970s armored black Lincoln Continental, which wended through the snowy streets of Pyongyang on Wednesday in a rigorously choreographed funeral. Mr. Kim's gigantic, smiling portrait was balanced atop a second Lincoln limousine. A third, slightly smaller Lincoln brought up the rear, its roof bearing an immense wreath. The aging but impeccably maintained cars gave the footage on North Korean state television the quality of a cold war Hollywood film.

The Lincoln Continental in the old Asia was considered to be a solid, robust, powerful car, said Kongdan Oh, a senior researcher at the Institute for Defense Analyses who has written on daily life in North Korea, where her parents were born. They are a time capsule. North Koreans are living still the 1970s life.

The casket of Kim Jong-il, who hated the United States, sat atop an American-made Lincoln Continental. The next leader, Kim Jong-un, is at left.Associated PressThe casket of Kim Jong-il, who hated the United States, sat atop an American-made Lincoln Continental. The next leader, Kim Jong-un, is at left.

She said the cars were probably chosen because they were previously used in the funeral of Kim Il-sung, who was Kim Jong-il's father and the founding president of North Korea and who died in 1994. Whatever they did in the past, they are very comfortable repeating that, especially this Kim family dynasty, she said of the North Korean leadership. They probably didn't even think twice about using this car. For them, it's a very natural choice.

Almost as soon as the funeral procession began, aficionados filled an online forum of the Professional Car Society with giddy speculation over the cars make, model and modifications.

The cars that led the procession were probably from either 1975 or 1976, according to Gregg D. Merksamer, who observed on the forum that the full, rear fender skirts and the five heavy vertical bars separating the grille into six sections were marks of those years that disappeared from later models.

Mr. Merksamer, who has written extensively about hearses, ambulances and other so-called professional cars, said that the inside of the limousine carrying Kim Jong-il's body would not have been outfitted for a coffin, which may explain why the body was placed on a bed of white flowers on the roof. But he wrote on the forum that it was definitely armored, as confirmed from the secondary chrome frame surrounding the slightly-open right front window.

Some car experts also drew attention to similarities between the car that transported Kim Jong-il's body and the Lincoln limo used as a hearse in the 1994 funeral of his father.

But Mr. Merksamer said in an e-mail that the car carrying the huge portrait of Kim Jong-il bore a greater resemblance to his father's Lincoln. (Official footage of that vehicle, posted by a Romanian news Web site, circulated on several car blogs.)

The finned-style wheel covers and oval opera windows in the D-pillars the car's rear-most vertical supports actually correlate to the sister car that carried Kim Jong-il's oversize portrait, Mr. Merksamer said in the e-mail. He said that car appeared armored as well.

It was not clear how the cars were obtained by North Korea, which is subject to economic sanctions by the United States and other world powers, and analysts said that they might have been bought decades ago. Behind the three vintage American cars were dozens of modern luxury Mercedes-Benz sedans and a larger number of more modest Volkswagen Passats from the 1990s, probably built in or acquired from China, the North's largest trading partner.

The Ford Motor Company, which owns the Lincoln brand, did not return e-mails seeking comment on the prominent role the classic Lincolns played in the procession or on whether any uptick in sales could be expected.

Ms. Oh, the North Korea analyst, cautioned against reading too much into North Korea's use in the state funeral of a car manufactured by its sworn enemy.

Because American cars were the prototype of the car industry, I don't think they're showing a friendly gesture or any signaling, she said. Even in the Maoist period in China, the Lincoln Continental was used.

Photo courtesy of Associated Press

Mr. Linsky - Green Bus Lines, Inc., Jamaica, New York

[JimmiB]

Thanks for posting that article Mr. L. When I saw that AP photo in the newspaper, I never gave a thought to the irony of using a Lincoln for this purpose.

[shortlineMCI]

Oh the Irony of it all!!!!!