‘It’s full of natural exotic leather…but not whale penis.’
When a car manufacturer is giving you details about its latest model, a line like this is guaranteed to grab your attention.
It’s just one of a number of unfathomable explanations for features in the new vehicle from Latvian tank-maker Dartz Motorz, which is without question the most bonkers car you could ever buy today.
Prices for the latest limited-edition Prombron SUV start from €750,000 (£660,000), though if you want your gold-plated utility vehicle to be fully armoured you will need to fork out at least €1.05million (£900,000).
The car’s full name [take a deep breath] is the Dartz Motorz Prombron The Dictator Aladeen Edition MMXXII. It doesn’t roll off the tongue, does it?
As you might have guessed from the extensive nameplate, this crazy vehicle has links to an equally controversial film.
Dartz originally created three ‘Aladeen Edition’ SUVs for 2012 movie The Dictator starring Sasha Baron Cohen as Admiral General Aladeen, the ruler of the fictional Republic of Wadiya in the contentious political satire hit.
The original cars were commissioned by producers and created by Dartz’s in-house ‘Movie Vehicle Department’, which has also built one-off models for 2013 film Another Day to Die Hard and 2014’s The November Man featuring Pierce Brosnan.
The trio of motors made for The Dictator proved such a success [says the Latvian brand] that it decided to build another seven for public sale, each costing in the region of £500,000.
The final two examples were sold only last year, one to the highest bidder at the esteemed Amfar Charity auction during the 2021 Cannes Film Festival.
To celebrate the final car changing hands and to mark the 10-year anniversary of the movie – which premiered at the Royal Albert Hall in May 2012 with Cohen in the Aladeen role arriving in his Lamborghini on the back of a tow truck having been clamped ‘while shopping at British Home Stores’ – Dartz Motorz is going to build another ten examples of its long-named successor.
Like the original, it is based on the armoured Prombron Iron Diamonds SUV, which Kanye West reportedly bought two of in 2013 at a total cost of $2.4million.
Underneath the unique gold-plated bodywork – which even features Wadiyan Badges and flag motifs – is a £170,000 Mercedes Maybach GLS limo. It uses the German luxury SUV’s 4.0-litre V8 petrol engine, though tuned to develop a massive 800bhp and 1,000Nm of torque.
Dartz says it can accelerate from a standstill to 62mph in 3.8 seconds and has a top speed of 174mph.
It needs this level of performance as the car’s target audience is the most famous people on the planet – those who need around-the-clock protection and bodyguards.
Having produced armoured vehicles in the past for Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky and Tsar Nicolas, Dartz offers a number of different protection options to at-risk customers who want to get their hands on the new limited edition SUV.
As standard, all 10 cars have carbon-kevlar body panels and ‘BR2’ grade bullet-resistant glass.
However, for an extra €300,000 (£265,000) you can upgrade yours to ‘STANAG’ Level 2 protection – STANAG being the official protection levels for light armoured vehicles set out by NATO.
This adds extra blast-proof shielding that will stop armour-piecing AK47 rounds at a range of 30 metres, grenade attacks, mine explosions and other heavy artillery fire.
Base cars get a fingerprint-operated safe to keep your hand gun, and also a separate storage area for your expensive cigars and another for your make-up.
A number of optional features are available at an extra cost, including a safe to keep an AK47, your own custom bulletproof helmet and even a compartment for a sword.
With just the bulletproof glass option, the vehicle’s weight is 2.2 tonnes. Fully-armoured versions are a hefty 3.1 tonnes, which will have a big impact on that sub-four-second zero-to-62mph time.
Inside is extremely lavish décor, supplemented by panels made from a choice of 550 different types of wood and buttons that are fabricated from genuine gold, so the Latvian brand claims.
The instrument clusters are traditional analogue gauges. Dartz’s spokesperson makes it abundantly clear that there is no place for digital screens here, stating: ‘f*ck LCD’.
Finally, if you hand over a little extra cash, Dartz will provide a ‘bulletproof umbrella made from alligator or python skin’, with the brand seemingly not learning from previous encounters with activists who firmly objected to the use of rare animal parts in its lavish cars.
In 2009, the car-making company was called out by Greenpeace, the World Wildlife Fund, and even Pamela Anderson after announcing that the Prombron armoured truck’s seats were upholstered in leather pulled from whale foreskin.
It forced Dartz into dropping the stomach-churning feature from the car, announcing in a typically mixed up statement in November that year: ‘We just looking for most expensive products for this car – and that’s why we choosed whale penis leathure when we checked it is most of most.
‘After wave of protest we realised our mistake and make a decision not to use natural leathure at all. We will focus on world most advanced nanotechnologies to achieve interior highest quality using artificial materials which also was never used for cars.
‘We want to tell our hello to all whales: “Our Sea Brothers! We all know that earth are stand on three whales – we will keep You live! We don’t Earth fall down to Ocean!”‘
While Dartz says it currently only plans to produce ten examples of the Prombron The Dictator Aladeen Edition MMXXII, it says it will build more if customers want them.
We can already hear you rustling around for your chequebooks…
