Don't you wish you had a Tatra 603?

courtesy voitures-d-ingenieurs.com.

Of course you do. According the nice folks at the above mentioned Voitures d'ingenieurs, the Tatra 603 was

sold in Eastern Block countries and driven mainly by Communist Party dignitaries and other high ranking officials. Approximately 20,000 Tatra 603s were manufactured between 1956 and 1978. The 603 was very strong, very comfortable and capable of top speeds close to 100 miles/hour. They were perfectly adapted for the bad roads of Eastern Europe.

Today being cold warrior LBJ's 98th birthday, I thought I would take note of it by showing you what we were fighting against, in Vietnam and elsewhere. Would (Western) communism have gone belly up anyway if thousands hadn't died to ward it off? Ok, I'm being glib. After all, how would I know? But it should be noted that the cold war era was very different from today as virtually everyone in the west, whether they agreed or not, understood the meaning of the struggle against communism in pretty much the same terms.