Posted on 04/12/2005 6:04:15 AM PDT by OESY
MUNICH, April 6 - Striding through the parking lot next to his factory, trailed by smoke from his Cuban cigar, Johann P. Ackermann gestures toward a black Mercedes-Benz sport utility vehicle. The roof, hood, and doors on the passenger side are punched in, as if by a giant fist. The internal screws that roll down the windows are embedded in the metal of the doors.
"A bomb exploded right next to it," Mr. Ackermann said. "Destroyed a building. But everybody in the car lived."
He delivers this sales pitch in a brusque, homicide-detective patter that somehow seems perfect for the product. Mr. Ackermann has got to be one of the world's few car dealers who moves his merchandise by showing it riddled with bullets, or twisted and singed by bomb blasts.
Mr. Ackermann, 57, and his sons own a company here that makes armored cars. It is a growth industry, with booming markets in Iraq, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and any number of other dangerous places, where a simple journey from point A to point B can be a lethal experience.
Increasingly, the vehicle of choice for this adventure travel is a German luxury sedan clad like a panzer. One can buy such a fortress-on-wheels directly from the company, or from an outfit like Mr. Ackermann's, which buys cars from dealers and puts on the armor plating itself.
Mercedes-Benz, BMW, and Audi are status symbols for the security-minded, just as they are for ordinary drivers. Even people who are not in any real danger covet armored models, in the same way that a Russian oligarch or a Hong Kong tycoon might collect bodyguards.
"One-third of the people who buy these cars are under threat, one-third think they are under threat, and one-third want to be in the first two categories," said Mr. Ackermann, pointing out photos of former customers, among them Frank Sinatra and the magician David Copperfield.
Cars like the bomb-scarred Mercedes that sits in Mr. Ackermann's lot, waiting to be fixed, used to be a rarity. He said it belonged to a Slovene industrialist, who was the target of an attack last fall. The man was away from the car at the time of the blast; his guards, who were inside, survived with minor injuries.
Just as terrorism in the Balkans added to the business, the Iraq war has turbocharged it. Car bombings, ambushes, even attacks by rocket-propelled grenades occur regularly in Iraq, and they demand a heavier level of protection than the lightly armored limousines normally used by fearful celebrities or Latin American industrialists.
"Iraq is a very important market for BMW right now, but it has nothing to do with the regular market, because we view it as a temporary phenomenon," said Michael Gallmann, a former German Army officer who heads the division at BMW that produces armored vehicles.
With governments, private contractors and news organizations all clamoring for cars to protect their employees, the wait for an armored car can be long. Most used vehicles have already been snapped up, and the Germans turn out only 10 or 20 new sedans a month. Even the sticker price of $425,000 for a limousine - $142,000 for an S.U.V. - has not curbed the demand.
The supply is also affected by changing security needs. The Toyota Land Cruiser, an S.U.V., was popular in Afghanistan. But many customers stay away from American or Japanese S.U.V.'s in Iraq because they have come to be associated with the foreigners who arrived alongside allied troops and are less common on the streets than German sedans, which have been around for some time. For BMW, Mercedes, and Audi, armored cars are a referral business. They do not advertise these vehicles, which are produced on high-security assembly lines and stored under lock and key.
The carmakers say they have to be discreet because of their rarified and risk-prone clientele. But they are proud of the engineering and the exotic gadgetry that goes into the cars. At times, their secrecy seems calculated to lend a James Bond-like mystique to the business.
The best publicity they can get is on the evening news. Last month, Anatoly B. Chubais, the architect of Russia's privatization in the 1990's, was ambushed on his way to work in an armored BMW. After detonating a bomb, gunmen raked the car with bullets, damaging the hood, windshield and right front tire, but not disabling it. Mr. Chubais was unscathed.
Even bad publicity does not seem to hurt. Mercedes remained the undisputed leader in armored cars even after a terrorist attack in 1989 in which the chairman of Deutsche Bank, Alfred Herrhausen, was killed near his home when a bomb hidden a child's knapsack blew apart his armored Mercedes.
Mercedes has been building "special protection" cars since 1928. One of its earliest models, a 1935 behemoth, the Grand Mercedes, was better known as Emperor Hirohito's limousine. (Hitler had something like it.)
BMW, with 30 years of experience, is a relative newcomer. But it has ambitions, as the ceremonial flag holders on its cars attest. "We want heads of states to be driven in BMW's," Mr. Gallmann said.
In a locked garage, he showed off an armored limousine once used to chauffeur the prime minister of Bavaria, Edmund Stoiber. It weighs 7,800 pounds but goes from 0 to 60 m.p.h. in 7.5 seconds. With windows more than two inches thick, it can withstand rounds from an M-16 or an AK-47.
While these cars have handy storage for machine pistols and an optional smoke machine to obscure the car during gun battles, BMW says they are meant to be defensive vehicles, not weapons.
It also says the protection in its cars is more sophisticated than that of outside companies like Mr. Ackermann's. His company, Alpha Armoring, basically puts an armor cage around the seating area. That can be cumbersome for people climbing in and out of the car.
So what? asked Mr. Ackermann, as he rapped his knuckles on an armor plate being lifted into a Mercedes. "My philosophy is, it's better to have a bump on your head than a bullet in your head."
That's pretty funny. The truck was so cartoonish looking to me that I thought it was a Photoshop mockup!
Me bad.
D
Not photoshopped. There are videos of that thing in action. Passenger has a joystick and video monitor; dual .50BMGs pops up from a closed hatch in the back, is self-stabilizing.
"Quit tailgating." 8-O
I beg to differ. How much life insurance do you have? That is the value YOU have placed on your life. This is done every day; the cost of a life is a part of the costs of business.
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