Politics
In November 2010. Iranian state television announced Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was to auction off his 1977 Peugeot 504 to raise money for charity. The car is white with a sky-blue interior, and has covered only 37,000 km since new. The political significance of the car being a 504 is that it was used as a working-class status symbol to draw electoral support from the less well-off during the 2005 presidential campaign. The money earned from the sale at international auction is to be donated to the Mehr housing project, a network of cooperatives that provides affordable housing for low-income families.
Soon after being put on auction in January 2011, a bid of $1 million was received from "an Arab country". When the auction closed in March 2011, the final bid was $2.5 million.
Read more about this topic: Peugeot 504
Famous quotes containing the word politics:
“The real grounds of difference upon important political questions no longer correspond with party lines.... Politics is no longer the topic of this country. Its important questions are settled... Great minds hereafter are to be employed on other matters.... Government no longer has its ancient importance.... The people’s progress, progress of every sort, no longer depends on government. But enough of politics. Henceforth I am out more than ever.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“Politics is repetition. It is not change. Change is something beyond what we call politics. Change is the essence politics is supposed to be the means to bring into being.”
—Kate Millett (b. 1934)
“Our family talked a lot at table, and only two subjects were taboo: politics and personal troubles. The first was sternly avoided because Father ran a nonpartisan daily in a small town, with some success, and did not wish to express his own opinions in public, even when in private.”
—M.F.K. Fisher (1908–1992)