11th
April
2008
What would a 'nine-minute limousine' be? One produced every nine minutes? 0-100 in nine minutes? Or is it a stretch-limo that will take a bubbly posse of screaming Essex girls from Basildon to the West End in a vodka and coke induced blur that seems like just nine minutes (to the passengers that is, but more like nine hours for the driver)?
No, it was an amusing advertising tagline used by Lada in Germany in the mid-90s.
Lada took space in German newspapers back then with a big campaign that proclaimed Lada the 'Nine-Minute Limousine'. (For those that don't remember the old deutschemark, there were about three to the pound.)
'The German Economics Institute has calculated that the average German worker only has to work nine minutes a day to earn 3.15 DM. For that, you can almost get a Lada Samara.'
Love the slow-burn humour encapsulated in that. One to perhaps trot out next time you hear someone take a cheap pop at a wheezing old Lada Samara or Riva (maybe such vehicles are 'classics' in Western European markets by now...).
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