MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay (AP) – President Jose Mujica says he has received a million-dollar offer to buy his blue 1987 Volkswagen Beetle, which has become a symbol of the Uruguayan leader’s austere lifestyle.
The man once nicknamed “the poorest president in the world” told the Uruguayan weekly Busqueda that an Arab sheik offered $1 million for the humble car. When asked about the reported offer at a news conference, Mujica said: “That’s what they said to me, but I didn’t give it any importance.”
In an informal chat, Mexico’s ambassador to Uruguay recently suggested to Mujica that he auction the Beetle in Mexico and predicted he could get 10 four-wheel-drive trucks for it, according to a spokesman for the Mexican Embassy who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk with the press.
Mujica, a former leftist Tupamaro guerrilla leader, said that if got $1 million for the car, he would donate the money to a program he supports that gives housing to the homeless. If he got trucks for it, he said, they could go to Uruguay’s public health office or his campaign workers.
The president said he would gladly auction the Beetle because he has “no commitment to cars” and he joked that he didn’t sell it because of his dog Manuela, famous for only having three legs.