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YET ANOTHER COLLECTOR CAR FOR ZELENSKYY???
YOU MIGHT RECALL FUGITIVE EX-U.S. COP John Marc Dougan, who runs the Kremlin’s disinformation network from Moscow. (Just the turncoat jackass one might trust, eh? Sorta a Fox News personified).
Well, John Marc Dougan is at it again. As reported in Forbes, October 9, 2024, and Voice of America, October 10, 2024, “Hitler’s Parade Car is Bought by Ukraine’s Zelensky.”
Gee, this one hits all the whacko conspiracy buttons: as timely as today’s news with Hitler thrown in for good measure. How did MTG let this slip by?
Yet how poorly it was executed! какой первоклассный тупица! What a first-class doofus!
The “Seattle Tribune” Report. Matthew Kupfer writes for VoA, “The article in the Seattle Tribune had everything: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Adolf Hitler and a $15 million classic car. Unsurprisingly, it spread like wildfire across Russia’s state and pro-Kremlin media.”
However, Kupfer continues, “There is no such media outlet as the Seattle Tribune, just a website masquerading as a full-fledged publication. And the article itself was a compilation of Russia’s faux ‘greatest hits’ about Ukraine—‘Nazism,’ ‘unrestrained corruption’ and ‘wasting American aid.’ ”
Easily Debunked B.S. Kupfer describes, “According to the phony news article, Zelenskyy was spotted in Kyiv exiting a Mercedes-Benz 770K Grosser Offener Tourenwagen, Adolf Hitler’s parade car. The sighting supposedly occurred just days after the Ukrainian leader returned from Washington, where the U.S. government had allocated an $8 billion aid package to his country.”
Kupfer noted, “The article featured a screenshot of a post by the Ukrainian Telegram messenger channel Realna Viyna (‘Real War’ in Ukrainian) featuring a photo of the vehicle parked in front of the Ukrainian presidential administration building in Kyiv.”
Here’s the fake Ukrainian Telegram pic, a doctored photo of the Hitler car superimposed in Kyiv.
There were problems galore with the posting. “First,” Kufper observed, “Realna Viyna did not publish the post in the screenshot. Second, the image of ‘Hitler’s car’ was stolen from a photo widely available on the internet that was digitally edited into an image of the Ukrainian presidential administration building.”
Image from Pinterest.
Writes Kupfer, “VOA found that the angle of photo in the screenshot, a black spot on the asphalt under the car’s running board, and the reflection on the front windshield completely match the image of the Mercedes-Benz 770K found across the internet.”
Geez, I could do as well with my ancient Paint Shop Pro: See “Been There, Sorta.” And, with regard to cars, my missing image.
A Fleeting News Source. Kupfer also recounts, “Third, the Seattle Tribune website was registered on October 3, 2024, just six days before the fake article was published. And the registration was set for only one year.”
Gee, I wonder if Fox News might secretly have a similar prepaid registration after its $787 million settlement with Domain Voting Systems?
And I can’t help but wonder at the folks who believe Fox News any more than Duggan’s blather. See also “Among America’s ‘Low-Information Voters.”
More on Duggan. Kupfer writes, “A former deputy sheriff in Florida, Dougan was charged with extortion and wiretapping in the United States. In 2016, he fled to Russia and later received political asylum there. He now operates at least 167 disinformation sites that often publish narratives serving Russian interests, according to a May 2024 investigation by NewsGuard.“
More on the Hitler Car. “The factual information,” Kupfer describes, “comes from an article in a real American newspaper, The Seattle Times, which reported in February 2018 that the Mercedes-Benz 770K had briefly appeared in the Seattle area after having been put up for auction in Scottsdale, Arizona, a month earlier.”
Kupfer continues, “The director of the auction company Worldwide Auctioneers, Rod Egan (his name was also mentioned in the fake Seattle Tribune story), refused to tell The Seattle Times the buyer of the car, citing a non-disclosure agreement. However, Egan said the car’s ultimate destination was ‘very, very far away’ outside the United States.”
I’d like to think that some Russian тупица bought the car. ds
© Dennis Simanaitis, SimanaitisSays.com, 2024
Simanaitis Says 
Those of us long involved with old cars are no stranger to the number of “Hitler Mercedes,” seemingly as common as “Bonnie and Clyde death cars;” bullet-riddled ’34 Ford sedans circulating Midwestern fairs and auctions.
The above contortion is just more of the same. Neither do we understand the fascination with cars purported to belong to dictators, hoodlums, despots. The Mercedes 770 is merely an enlarged 500/540K, a pushrod ohv inline eight, about which Ralph Stein perfectly summed in his 1967 tome, The Great Cars:
“They were fat and heavy (about 5,500 pounds) and vulgarly curvilinear. I thought at the time that if you had draped them with medals, they’d look like dear old Hermann Goering himself. If he had wheels. A good 540K, supercharger clutched in, would do 105 mph; 0 to 60 in 14 seconds. (With blower it developed 180 hp; without 115.) I ran away from one once in my old 4 1/2-liter Invicta, but perhaps the Mercedes-Benz was in poor fettle that day.”
The elephantine 770 strode a wheelbase of either 148 or 153 inches, with a minimal weight over three tons, 7.7 liters (467-ci), 3.74 x 5.31 bore/stroke, 150 hp, 200 w/ supercharger engaged. However, like the 500/540K, drivers were warned not to engage the blower for more than 20 seconds at a time. So spurred, a 770 could manage an all out 93 mph.
In other words, a healthy late ’30s Buick Century/Roadmaster could match a blower-engaged 500/540K, a Buick Limited, among various other domestics, could take a 770.
Someday, we might debunk so much malarkey lauded another darling of the auction and concours circuits, the Duesenberg J/SJ, but beware of ruffling Sun Belt nest featherers.