The three letter designation was the former name of the ZIL company. It was renamed after WW2 in the honor of Joseph Stalin , their dictator at the time. ZIL and ZIS made low volume models, actually bespoke products, for government officials and foreign dictators from its regular line of vehicles.ZIS stood for “Zavod imeni Stalina,” and the company’s name was changed to “Zavod imeni Likhachova,” which was the last name of its former director . Regardless of the naming changes, the car brand is long gone, and its remaining products are valuable to collectors.Evidently, a regular person living in the Soviet Union, or anywhere else in the world, could not order a luxury model from ZIS/ZIL anyway.Let us be clear here, the ZIL brand was available in theory, but its products were prohibitively expensive for the average worker. The rest of the ZIL vehicles were trucks, army transporters, tractors, and buses.An unnamed German seller posted an ad on Mobile.de showcasing a ZIS-110, which was made in 1945 and reportedly had Joseph Stalin as its passenger on several occasions.While the vendor does not mention any proof of the dictator’s presence in the vehicle, he or she wants EUR 8.5 million (approx. $9 miilion) for it, which may seem steep to some of you.The ZIL company only made 2,038 ZIS-110 cars between 1945 and 1958, which makes them rather valuable today. Several dictators from Soviet states, or even from countries that were friends of the regime received them as gifts.If you happen to find the design of this product familiar, we shall have you know that it is presumed to have been developed from the 1942 Packard Super Eight.That involves an unauthorized use of the American company’s patents, because no agreement between the USSR and the USA was signed regarding the rights to the design and technology employed by the Packard Motor Car Company.All of that is in the past, but a very wealthy collector of Soviet-era relics has the opportunity of purchasing this ZIS-110. The price is negotiable, comrade.