King Zog liked his cars (big)

KING Zog of Albania had a penchant for the finer things in life.

Around 1930 he wanted to buy a Bugatti Type 41, better known as a Royale.

The massive luxury cars were among the world’s finest and most expensive, but his table manners precluded him from ever getting his royal butt into one.

He and Ettore Bugatti apparently dined together at some time and Mr Bugatti, a man of impeccable manners and taste, was appalled.

“The man’s table manners are beyond belief,” he was quoted as saying, and he flatly refused to let Zog own one his cars.

He had planned to build 25 Royales, aiming to sell them to royal personages around the world.

But from 1927 to 1933 only seven of the motoring masterpieces emerged from his Molsheim plant.

The cars were among the largest, measuring some 6.5m from front bumper to rear and were powered by massive straight-eight engines of 12.8 litres.

No two were alike, each having a different body style.

However, King Zog was not to be denied.

He got married in 1938 and got, among a vast variety of gifts from the heads of other nations, not a Bugatti, but a German near-equivalent: a Mercedes 540 K. More of that a little later.

Zog is said to have created his throne for himself and as Europe’s only Muslim king ruled Europe’s most obscure country.

He started life as Ahmed Bey Zogolli or Ahmed Zogu in 1895, the son of an Albanian chief, when the country was still part of the Ottoman empire.

Order broke down during World War 1 as other Balkan countries tried to seize parts of Albania.

From 1920 there was a succession of short-lived governments, in which Zog held various political posts until he was driven into exile in 1924. But not for long.

He returned within months, crossing into Albania with Yugoslav backing and an army of mercenaries recruited with funds from oil companies and wealthy Albanian families.

Zog established himself as the president of Albania and any rivals soon came to a sticky end.

But he knew he could only survive with strong support and a military alliance was signed with Italy in 1927.

In 1928 a new Constituent Assembly proclaimed Albania a monarchy under Zog I.

He made his way to the ceremony in Tirana in an open car with an escort of cavalry, but the streets were kept clear of spectators for fear of assassination.

King Zog married Countess Geraldine Apponyi of Hungary in April, 1938. Her mum was a US diplomat.

It was quite an event. In addition to his own, Zog also paid for 100 other couples to be wed on the same day and the reception was something else — the few hotels in Tirana were chock-full with the many wedding guests.

There were also 79 foreign photographers and journalists to tell the world about it, and the gifts were extravagant.

Hungary donated four Arab horses, Italy a yacht, four bronze vases and an antique figure of a dragon, France a Sevres vase, and, oh yes, that Mercedes 540 K – complete with letter of congratulations, from none other than Herr Adolf Hitler.

King Zog was head of state only until the start of WWII when Mussolini ousted him and declared Albania an Italian protectorate.

Zog went into exile, for part of the time comfortably housed in London’s Ritz Hotel.

He took his Mercedes with him and as Geraldine reminded him, it was perhaps not the right car to drive around London while the Luftwaffe was bombing the city, so he donated it to the British Red Cross.

In 1946, it placed an ad for it in Autocar magazine: “For sale Mercedes 1938, type 540 K, excellent car produced without financial problems, offered by Adolf Hitler to King Zog of Albania. Price: 3250 pounds…”

Where it is today in uncertain. It was acquired by a US collector and for a while displayed in a museum in Illinois, but disappeared some years ago and is rumoured to be part of Ralph Lauren’s collection. He has not confirmed or denied it.

Hitler gave similar cars to King Farouk and 10 other unnamed allies of the time.

King Zog’s last car was a 1949 Rover, which he used up to his death, in Paris, in 1961, aged 65.

Geraldine lived to 84.

Of the seven Bugatti Royales built, six are still is existence. The seventh was wrecked in a crash.

Ettore also crashed his own model, called the Napoleon, after falling asleep at the wheel. But a major rebuild had it running again.

The Royale was launched just as the world economy began to deteriorate into the Great Depression of the 1930s, hence money was tight and none were bought by any royals. Three went to wealthy privateers.

King Alfonso of Spain was set to get one but he was deposed in 1931 and the first Royale to go to a buyer was only delivered a year later.

Where are they now?

The first one, on chassis #41100, known as the Coupé Napoleon, is in the Musée National.

It was used by Ettore Bugatti, and in later life became his personal car.

It remained in the family’s possession, housed at their Ermenonville chateau, until financial difficulties forced its sale in 1963.

It originally had a Packard body but was later rebodied by Parisian coach builder Weymann as a fixed head coupe.

At various times it also had other bodies.

It was bricked up with #41141 and #41150 during WWII at the Bugatti family home in Ermenonville, to avoid being commandeered by the Nazis.

It was sold to the brothers Schlumpf in the early 1960s, then went to the US and sold at the 1986 Harrah auction where Houston real estate developer Jerry J. Moore paid $6.5 million for it.

He kept it for a year, and then sold it to Tom Monaghan, founder of Domino’s Pizza, for US$8.1 million. (That’s AU$13.2 million)

The second car built, but the first to find a customer, is chassis #41111, known as the Coupé de ville Binder

Sold in April, 1932 to French clothing manufacturer Armand Esders, it was to have been built for the King of Romania but was stored in the sewers of Paris to keep it safe from the Nazis in WWII.

It spent a little time in the UK before ending up in the Harrah Collection at Reno, Nevada, bought at the then sensational price of $45,000 — about what it had cost new.

In 1986, collector William Lyon offered it at the 1996 Barrett-Jackson Auction with the reserve set at US$15 million.

It was sold in 1999 for a reported US$20 million (AU$32m) to VW, current owners of the Bugatti brand.

Third one built was chassis #41121, Bugatti Type 41 Royale ‘Weinberger Cabriolet’.

It was sold in 1932 to German obstetrician Joseph Fuchs, who relocated to Switzerland, then Shanghai, before settling in New York around 1937, taking the Royale with him.

In 1946, Charles Chayne, later vice-president of engineering at General Motors, found the car in a scrap yard in New York.

He bought it for US$75, spent $10,000 on restoring and improving it — he fitted a new intake manifold with four carburetters, instead of the original single carb setup – repainted it and drove it for the next 10 years.

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He then donated it to the Henry Ford Museum, in Dearborn, Michigan, US, where it is still on display.

Chassis #41131, known as the Limousine Park-Ward, was the fourth of the series and is also on view at the Musée National de l’Automobile de Mulhouse.

It changed hands several times, from Englishman Captain Cuthbert W. Foster, to British Bugatti dealer Jack Lemon Burton then, in 1956, US Bugatti collector John Shakespeare acquired it.

In 1963 he sold it to Fritz Schlumpf who parked it alongside #41100 at the museum.

Chassis #41141 was kept by Bugatti and hidden with #41100 and #41150 during WWII.

In 1950, it and #41150 were sold to US Le Mans racer Briggs Cunningham for US$571 (about AU$900), plus a pair of new General Electric refrigerators.

A stunning deal, but fridges were simply not available in post-war France and the French franc had been drastically devalued.

After closing his museum in 1986, Cunningham sold it via Christie’s for US$9.7 million to Swedish property tycoon Hans Thulin.

After his business hit rough times, Thulin sold the car in 1990 for a reported $15.7 million to the Japanese Meitec Corporation before it was offered for sale for £10 million (AU$21m) by Bonhams & Brooks by private treaty in 2001.

It has in recent years been shown by Swiss broker Lukas Huni.

Cunningham sold the sixth, one, chassis #41150, known as the Berline de Voyage to Cameron Peck, who moved it on to Tom Monaghan, who, in turn, sold it to the Blackhawk Collection in Danville, California, where it was been on display before being sold to an ‘unknown buyer’, rumoured to be a Korean investor.

Back to Ettore.

He had 30 of the big engines built for his Royales but with just seven cars built, there were 23 left.

What to do?

Well, he built a railcar powered by his eight-cylinder units – and hey presto: France suddenly had very fast railcars.

About 80 were built for the French National Railway SNCF, the last of them remaining in regular use until 1958.

The railcar turned the Royale project from an economic disaster into a commercial success.

For the record books, in 1934 one of the railcars took a world average speed record of 122 mph (196 km/h) for 43.9 miles (70.7 km).

Footnote:

In 2012 Zog’s remains were returned to Albania from a cemetery in Paris where they had lain since his death in 1961.

H was succeeded as claimant to the throne and head of the House of Zogu by his only son Leka, Crown Prince of Albania (born 1939), who was proclaimed King of the Albanians by the Albanian National Assembly in exile.

Leka I remained head of the house and claimant to the throne until his death in 2011 when he was succeeded by his only son, Leka II.