18. President Nixon entertained Leonid Brezhnev at Camp David
In 1973, as the Watergate scandal was unraveling his presidency, Richard Nixon invited Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev to visit Camp David. When Brezhnev arrived, Nixon gave him a 1973 Lincoln Continental as a gift. The Soviet leader was thrilled with the car, and asked Nixon to join him in a drive down the camp’s main road, a suggestion with which Nixon readily agreed. Nixon later recounted the story of the drive, writing, “He got behind the wheel and motioned me into the passenger seat”. Nixon claimed that his “Secret Service man went pale” as he got into the passenger seat, and the leaders of the Soviet Union and the United States “took off down one of the narrow roads…”
Brezhnev exhibited a penchant for driving at high speed, ignoring Nixon’s pleas to slow down as they approached a tight turn on the wooded road at a speed of “more than fifty miles per hour”. At one point, had Brezhnev not been able to make a turn the car would have tumbled down a steep slope along the side of the road. Brezhnev made the turn, and according to Nixon’s account, the president informed him that he was an excellent driver.
