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It's pretty much a given that, historically, the world's dictator's drive big, flashy cars.

It's good for the ego, the power-trip image and really, when no one holds you accountable you can drive whatever you damn well please. Plus, the bigger the car, the more bullet-proof armour you can slap on it.

So it must have been disconcerting to the world's tyrants when Libya's lunatic, Moammar Gadhafi, showed up holding an umbrella and driving in a glorified golf cart on Feb. 21 to dispel rumours that he had fled the country. More precisely, the colonel's vehicle was a tuk-tuk, a motorized rickshaw popular throughout Asia.

How unbecoming.

At the very least, the tyrant of Tripoli could've driven up in the Saroukh el-Jamahiriya, the Libyan Rocket car he personally designed in celebration of the 40th Anniversary of the coup that brought him to power. Gadhafi's car seats five, has the nose and tail of a rocket and is powered by a 3.0-litre V6. Some rocket. A teeny tiny one. Still, it's a step up from a tuk-tuk.

Or maybe he could've checked out what has been popular with all the world's other bad boys, past and present:

The Butcher of Uganda and "uncrowned King of Scotland" owned seven Citroën SMs, a sporty little number, which was produced from 1970-75.

Hitler used a Mercedes-Benz 770K 'Grosser' luxury car as his German parade limousine and all the top Nazi lickspittles drove them, too.

The North Korean nut job is reported to to be a fan of luxury cars and has been known for racing his cars at his palaces. Kim spent $20-million to import 200 Mercedes Benz S500 luxury sedans adding to North Korea's stock pile of 7,000 Mercedes.

The Marxist revolutionary, leader of the 1917 October Revolution and founder of the Soviet Union owned nine Rolls-Royce Silver Ghosts during his reign. A regal Bolshevik.

Italy's Fascist dictator favoured the Lancia Astura, a 1939 custom built parade car. When deposed in 1945, he escaped in a black Fiat Berlinetta coupe but was captured, executed and strung up at a gas station.

He's not the top dog just yet, but the son and supposed successor to autocrat Teodoro Obiang, president of Equatorial Guinea, lives lavishly in a country where 60 per cent of the population struggles to survive on less than a dollar a day and counts a Bugatti Veyron and a Maserati MC12 among his rides.