Here we sat, at the height of the Cold War, in the
middle of the Jet Age and just at the beginnings of
the Space Age. Things are frosty as ever with our
scary neighbors over on the other side of the Iron
Curtain, and we are just months away from the Cuban
Missile Crisis.
What better time to let the Godless Communists KNOW
that they're holding onto the short end of the stick?
How Can Chrysler Help?
How about a nice little print item that shows the best
sides of our society's technological and cultural
advantages as a backdrop to the most cutting edge,
FORWARD LOOK cars being produced on this side of the
world?
If you've never seen a Trabant up close, which was the
car being built for the People of Russia at the time,
it is such a far cry from western cars as to be
laughable. The one that I inspected in the early
1990's was a relatively recent 1985 model and it had
totally mechanical rod linkages that operated the
braking system. It's my understanding that as with
Checker Cabs, they designed them and then just ran the
assembly line forever without much change.
Anyway, that's what was going on over there.
Now, you're sitting in your office in Moscow in 1959,
a powerful official, having arrived at work in your
chauffered ZIL limousine, and you get a special
Russian language brochure from Amerika.
Inside, you find what must certainly be the most
spectacular pack of capitalist lies and propoganda yet
created. Certainly this is trumped up hype. You
glance around furtively, but open it anyway - can't
hurt to look...
How jealous would our former enemies have been about
this? The text is REALLY interesting, as Chrysler
probably wasn't planning this item as a prelude to
selling cars there. Who thought it up? Who was it
sent to? What did they think? It's fun to imagine
the "what if's".
