Vladimir Putin's stretch Mercedes could be yours for $1.3 million

Celebrity connections often increase the value of a car. Having the name “Steve McQueen” on a car’s logbook instantly bumps up its price by a factor of many, for instance. The seller of this stretched Mercedes clearly believes its ownership history has added to its worth, even if the celebrity connection is a bit, err, dubious.

To be clear, there doesn’t appear to be any doubt about the authenticity of his claims about who used to roll in this particular limo. I’m just not sure it’s a name a new owner would want their car associated with. Because that name is Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.

But we’ll come back to that in a bit. For now, let’s consider what we actually have here.

It’s a 1995 Mercedes-Benz S600 Pullman Guard, a factory-built, armoured limo stretched as much as the W140-generation S Class could be.

In the back there are two pairs of sumptuous armchairs that face each other, divided down the middle by a console that probably contains every gadget that existed in the mid-1990s. I’m hoping it has a built-in fax machine. Just because.

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The driver, meanwhile, gets to play with the 6.0-liter V12 motor, which serves up 394 horsepower (294 kilowatts) - a very healthy figure at the time. But then, it needs a lot of power. The W140 has a notoriously heavy beast to begin with, before adding an extra few feet to the wheelbase and then garnishing it with top-level B6/B7 ballistic protection. I doubt it weighs less than 10,000 pounds (4,500 kilograms).

As it was built in 1995, it seems likely the Pullman had been doing duty for the Russian Government for a few years before Putin first took office as Prime Minister in 1999. He was promoted to President in 2000 after Boris Yeltsin resigned. It isn’t clear how often Putin used the car, or for how long. But its low odometer reading of 25,000 kilometers (15,500 miles) suggests it has lead a relatively gentle life. It isn’t clear how the private seller came by it.

When it was new, this Pullman probably cost around $500,000. Now, the Moscow-based seller wants €1.3 million ($1,351,740) for it. Ouch.

As these are so rare, it’s difficult to know what it would normally be worth - maybe only 10 or 20 percent of that €1.3 million figure. Is it worth it? Depends if anyone is that big a fan of Putin. Trump, perhaps?

Or even the man himself. He only draws a salary of $120,000 but is thought to be worth $85 billion - work that one out - so the price of this is just pocket change.

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