Andropov’s limousine for sale in Yekaterinburg
The limousine’s massive steering wheel was intended for a specially trained government chauffeur.
A retiree from Yekaterinburg has restored and preserved a Soviet limousine that was intended for Yuri Andropov, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). The ZIL 41045 — built by Zavod imeni Likhachyova, the Likhachev Plant (ZIL) — not only looks immaculate but also drives like new. Its owner explained how such a unique car came into his hands.
Igor Pavlovich offers his rare ZIL 41045 for sale to collectors.
Igor Pavlovich, the protagonist of our story, says he bought the car in the late 1990s. He loves history and collects cars, and the Andropov-era ZIL brought those passions together. In the late 1990s he was invited to view a car located in the capital. He went to see it and decided he wanted the ZIL for himself.
Igor Pavlovich devotes his time to preserving and collecting historically significant automobiles.
«Stalin’s ZIL faded into the past, and a Khrushchev-era ZIL appeared. There was the 117, and Brezhnev already rode in the 114. And when he was laid to rest, ZIL faced a problem: the new general secretary needed a new modification.» That is how the 41045 model appeared — one of the rarest in the line. It is no surprise the collector decided to acquire it.
He said ZIL’s representative limousines were never built on a conveyor — everything was done by hand in teams of four: one team made the body, another handled the running gear, and then everything was joined together. Producing a single car took 6–7 months.
Igor Pavlovich’s car, however, spent almost a year and a half in assembly because it was being built for Andropov, and there was no rush. The car was finished when the general secretary was in the hospital. He never got to ride in it — Yuri Andropov died on 9 February 1984.
When this car was brought to Yekaterinburg from Moscow, it was running but needed repairs. Igor Pavlovich found former ZIL employees in the city who restored it.
«This car is clean — everything is original; you can verify it by checking the body numbers on the bumper, under the hood, and throughout the car. The 45th model is the rarest because it was produced at the junction of eras, in the Soviet Union’s final decade,» says Igor Pavlovich. There are only four ZIL “forty-fives” authenticated by their serial numbers — one of them is in Yekaterinburg.
Igor Pavlovich takes this extremely rare car out only twice a year. One occasion falls on Airborne Forces Day — Vozdushno-desantnye voyska (Airborne Forces, VDV), a military holiday. The tradition began by chance in 2021, when he was driving home from service on the holiday. Since then, each 2 August the car cruises the streets with VDV and Russian flags.
He used to take it to exhibitions, but that was long ago. The ZIL was last shown twenty years ago. Now the luxurious Politburo limousine sits in the owner’s garage. He has put it up for sale, valuing it at 30 million rubles (about $300,000 at current rates).
If you love unusual cars, read about an old Volga that its owner turned into a «Batmobile». We also covered a resident of Berezovsky (Sverdlovsk Oblast) who assembled a whole collection of vintage cars. See also how a businessman from Alapayevsk restored a rare Plymouth Barracuda.
