As the newly installed pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church,
Pope Francis will often be seen greeting the world from the back of a
rather peculiar vehicle. It’s taken many shapes over the last three decades, but the classification is one we’ve become pretty accustomed to: the popemobile.
More than half of the world’s population is under 30, according to the
United Nations, so anyone who’s seen a pope — in person or on TV — has
probably never seen him riding in another vehicle.
Popemobiles may not
be hot collectibles (and are unlikely to headline future Barrett-Jackson
auctions), but they are a fascinating part of vehicular history.
While the pope is considered infallible, he still has to travel like the
rest of us terrestrial beings — except that the automobile of the
highest-ranking Catholic is a pure white vehicle topped by an armored
glass display case and wearing a license plate that translates to
Vatican City 1.
The original popemobile wasn’t a car at all, but a plush sedan chair
carried by 12 footmen in red uniforms.
Pope John Paul II rushed headlong
into modernity in 1978, retiring that richly upholstered ride, the
sedia gestatoria, in favor of motorized versions built on several
different chassis.
One of the early models was a Fiat Campagnola, another a Mercedes
Geländewagen, and, in a show of magnanimity toward his native Poland,
one of his popemobiles was a Polish-made FSC Star. With its beefy
military look, that one may well have been intended as a thumb in the
eye of an Eastern bloc power structure resentful of church influence.
Of course, popes of the sedan-chair era rode in automobiles, too, just
not the pope-on-parade type we’re used to now. In years past, popes were
passengers in what were basically lay versions of the limousines
favored by banana-republic dictators, the first said to have been a 1930
Mercedes-Benz Nürburg 460.
The first popemobile thought to have an open top with a rising throne
rear seat was a 1960 Mercedes 300D Landaulet. That was followed by a
1964 Lincoln Continental Lehmann-Peterson and Paul VI’s 1965 Mercedes 600 Pullman.
Popemobiles from the John Paul II papacy onward have melded limo or
truck bodies with sedia gestatoria utility, creating the familiar white
jewelbox.
Papal mobility in the last 30 years has been provided by a
1979 Ford Transit, a 1981 Peugeot 504, a 1982 Seat, a 1982 Range Rover, a
1982 Leyland truck, a 1984 GMC Sierra, a 1997 Mercedes S500, a 2002
Mercedes ML430 and a Mexican bus.
The newest popemobile, procured late
last year during the truncated papacy of Benedict XVI, is a
slick-looking Mercedes M-Class.
Perhaps Francis will call for popemobiles to switch to electric or
veggie fuel power.
But the real trick would be a popemobile using
magnetic levitation, like some rail systems, allowing His Holiness to
hover above the ground as his procession glides by.
Can the Vatican’s motor pool decline the offer of Mercedes-Benz
executives, who, it was reported last week, hoped for an audience in
order to suggest upgrades for future popemobiles?
Why can’t the
popemobile be a Renault?
A Ferrari?