Auta našich prezidentů 1918-2024 – Tuček Jan (2024)

For more than a hundred years, automobiles have transported Czechoslovak and Czech presidents. This book aims to map the colorful palette of several hundred cars from two dozen domestic and foreign brands that have significantly marked our history thanks to their users. In addition to well-known vehicles, it also recalls some that are almost forgotten. The founder of Czechoslovakia, T. G. Masaryk, did not only travel in Laurin and Klement, Praga, Škoda Hispano-Suiza, and Tatra cars, but in 1919 also in an Austrian limousine, Gräf und Stift. Edvard Beneš had an armored convertible Praga Golden made in 1936, in which he drove through liberated Prague after returning from exile in May 1945. In 1945 and 1947, he acquired two English Daimler limousines. Emil Hácha served as the so-called state president in the German-occupied protectorate from November 1938, and in the summer of 1942, he received an armored Mercedes 770 from Berlin for his 70th birthday. The eight-cylinder Daimler used by Beneš was taken over by the first communist president, Klement Gottwald, in June 1948. However, he soon replaced it with a domestic armored VOS. Antonín Zápotocký also drove the same model, before switching to Soviet ZIM and ZIS cars. From 1957 to 1968, Antonín Novotný proudly drove Soviet ZIS and ZIL automobiles, while...