The Real Story Of How Whale Penis Leather Became The Most Infamous Upholstery Of The 21st Century

Remember way back in 2009, during the heady days of the early Obama administration and the release of the VW Routan and our collective obsession with the artificial sweetener Stevia, which had just been approved? Sure you do, we all do. Those were incredible times. And if you had to pick the one automotive upholstery and aquatic mammal genitals related story from that year that made the biggest, longest-lasting impact, I think I know exactly what that story had to be: the ultra-luxury SUV upholstered in whale penis leather.

Yes, that’s right, the whale penis leather SUV. The SUV in question was the DARTZ Prombron Monaco Red Diamond, and I know you must remember all the stories about that incredible machine, which was said to be, at about $1,450,000, the world’s most expensive SUV at the time.

The list of features of this thing was pretty impressive:

“1. Ruby Red matte paint
2. Gold-plated bulletproof windows
3. 22” Kremlin Red Star bulletproof wheels
4. Whale Penis Leather interior
5. Tungsten exhaust
6. Tungsten and white gold gauges with diamonds and rubies
7. White gold diamond and ruby encrusted badges – grill, side and dashboard
8. Special edition Vertu mobile phone with “alert” button
9. Additional outside kevlar coating
10. Rogue Acoustic Audio System.

And, of course, of course –
THREE BOTTLES OF World Most Expensive Vodka – RussoBaltique Vodka, drink edition, same as in the RussoBaltique car when it visited Monaco at 1912.”

Ah, remember Vertu phones? Are they even still around? Holy crap, they are. Who is buying these things still?

Anyway, back to this Prombon; while that list has all kinds of remarkable entries on it (white gold diamond and and ruby encrusted badges, bulletproof wheels, gold-plated windows) there’s no way the mention of “whale penis leather” on that list doesn’t stop and grab your gaze like a schnauzer clamping onto a dropped salami.

And, after all these years, I realized that I never really knew the full story behind this remarkably attention-grabbing choice of upholstery. Why did DARTZ decide to use whale penis leather for this car? Was there a retired whale mohel on staff? Was it a gambit to get as much online attention as possible and go viral? A specific request from a client with an extremely specific kink?

The good news is I don’t have to guess, because Leonard Yankelovich, DARTZ’s Inheritor-Reviver and Owner of DARTZ Motorz as well as their Lunatic-in-Chief is someone I can just, you know, ask. So I did, finally! And the answers are absolutely not what I would have expected.

First, there’s the question of was using whale penis leather all just for internet hype and clicks? Leonard says no, absolutely not:

“Never. I have zero vision. It was some 2006 when uncle told me about and was just about “softest” and “biggest one piece” [of leather]  Zero about HYPE.
Just very soft, very big, easy to cut on big seat . It wasn’t about hype and seems it was legal then. I mean at 2006 or so.
Being small guy from small country I was always trying to be just the best. So I have no idea about hype – I even don’t know this word) As You remember my English was also levels down.”

Leonard told me that the original reason for his interest in the whale penis leather was that he had an uncle in the leather business:

“Yes, man who owned leather company in UK, we managed him fucking cheap raw skins from USSR, he made from them automotive, aviation, furniture and garment leather.”

This uncle was able to source all sorts of hides and skins from a pretty wide variety of exotic beasts, and it seems at some point – during the brief period when it was still legal, which, Leonard was quick to point out, it very much now is not – his uncle got ahold of a large supply of whaleskin, including a substantial amount of whale penis skin.

If you’ve ever seen a whale penis – and I don’t know what you’re into and I certainly don’t kink shame, so no judgements if you have – they’re quite, um, substantial. About 10 feet long and more than a foot in diameter, which equates to a lot of whale penis skin, and there may have been more than one involved, too.

This supply of whale penis leather may actually be one of the most famous supplies of whale penis leather ever, because before it ended up covering the seats of that infamous DARTZ, that same supply, sold by Leonard’s uncle, was used to cover another famous set of seats: six barstools on the Christina O, the yacht owned by the famous Greek shipping Magnate Aristotle Onassis.

Onassis delighted in the fact that his barstools were upholstered in whale penis leather, and it’s said he never missed a chance to remind people of that, especially women. “Ladies, you are sitting on the largest penises on the planet,” he would say to women seated at his bar, creepily, before retiring to a corner, I assume, to furtively jerk off with delight at his joke. They’re on penis skin, you see! Like a penis has!

So, while it can’t be conclusively proven that the Prombron Red Diamond’s whale penis leather came from the same batch as Onassis’ bar stool upholstery, most of the circumstances point to that being the case. Same type of skin, same source and vendor, just three decades later. And new whale penis skin was pretty impossible to source since 1986, when the global commercial International Whaling Commission moratorium went into effect. As Leonard said to me, “even whale hunters from Norway can’t help” and that the leather he got was from an “old dick.”

So, that whale penis leather on the DARTZ from 2009 is very likely to be from the same old whale dick that Aristotle Onassis used on his famous boat, which gives those car seats some pretty impressive pedigree.

Even if DARTZ used old-stock whale penis leather, they still got a lot of blowback from animal rights groups, prompting Leonard to issue a press release in later 2009 that pledged that DARTZ would use artificial (but still very luxury-grade) materials on future SUVs, and included this incredible statement of solidarity with the whale population:

“Our Sea Brothers! We all know that earth are stand on three whales – we will keep You live! We don’t Earth fall down to Ocean!”

The “three whales” thing refers to an old Russian folklore saying, but even without knowing that, it’s a pretty powerful statement of cetacean support.

So, that’s the backstory to the whale penis leather seats: it wasn’t done for hype or going viral, because the goal was just to find the softest leather DARTZ could get. And that leather happened to be in the supply of Leonard’s uncle, who also used (very likely) that same supply of whale penis leather to outfit Aristotle Onassis’ yacht. It’s old dick leather from Moby Dick, and it’s very likely that there will never be a car with such upholstery ever again.

(Top image: DARTZ, NOAA, Wikimedia Commons)