BEIJING (Reuters) - For tourists with a taste for revolutionary kitsch, there is a new treat on display in China -- a six-door stretch limousine custom built for Chairman Mao Zedong complete with a refrigerator, a desk and a double sofa bed.
The man who led the Long March across China ordered the 10-meter (33-foot) limo in the early 1970s to show his confidence in China's fledgling auto industry but died in 1976 before he could use it, the official Xinhua news agency said on Thursday.
"We must produce our own longest limousine," it quoted the founder of Communist China, renowned for his excesses in later life, as saying.
The super-long Red Flag limousine, the first and last produced by the First Automobile Works was equipped with a color television, air-conditioning, a telephone, a desk and two double sofas, one of which converted into a double bed, Xinhua said.
A Chinese collector named Luo Wenyou had recently put the car on display at a stadium in the city of Chengde in northern Hebei province, it said.
Luo declined to explain how the car came into his hands, Xinhua said.
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