04/12 2020 by MS
Role
Kamal Khan and Magda is leaving the auction house in London in a Mercedes-Benz 600 Pullman with Gobinda as chauffeur.
The car
The Mercedes-Benz 600 is a high-end luxury sedan and limousine produced by Mercedes-Benz from 1963 to 1981. A total 2.677 units of the Model W100 were manufactured, including only 124 of the long wheelbase 6-door Pullman version, which is seen in Octopussy.
The 600 type got attention of the world due to the class of its owners. Being used by government members, heads of the state, prominent people, celebrities, it received very good publicity on the first pages of newspapers and tabloids. From another point of view it became a symbol of totalitarianism, dictatorship and communistic autocracy - there is a huge list of dictators who owned it (in many cases multiple models) and liked to expose themselves exactly in this car. Let's mention only few of them: Josip Broz Tito, Nicolae Ceaușescu, Pol Pot, Francois (Papa Doc) Duvalier, Jean-Bédel Bokassa, Leonid Brezhnev, Fidel Castro, Ferdinand Marcos (who owned four), Kim Il-sung, Kim Jong-il, Saddam Hussein.
Such real historical background is additionally underlining the "dark power" and aspirations of Kamal Khan in Octopussy.
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