With a shiver of trepidation, I slip behind the wheel of the museum’s grand 1936 Packard phaeton Standard Eight parade car. I’m nervous because its original owner would have had me shot— if I were lucky —for getting anywhere near it. You see, Ioseb Besarionis dzе Jughashvili, more commonly known as Joseph Stalin —despotic ruler of the Soviet Union in the 1930s —was not an easy-going guy.
This particular Packard was purchased by Stalin’s regime along with nine others, and was exported to Russia by the United States government for Uncle Joe’s use. As the story goes, many years later in 1990 it was shipped to Germany for restoration. And then three years after that it was shipped to a fellow named John Scales in Dalla,s Texas, an American professional restorer, for further work. His efforts took two years to bring the car to the near show winning condition it is in now.
