A Royal Motor Enthusiast. The late King of the Belgiums.

Progress, Volume V, Issue 5, 1 March 1910, Page 174

A Royal Motor Enthusiast. The late King of the Belgiums.

The King of the Belgians, who died the other day, never got a good word from the world in general, but was a favourite with the motoring fraternity in particular. After his death the motor journals all came out with tributes to his memory, and were full of anecdotes of the things he was always doing with motor-cars. "Whenever he appeared at the Paris Salon no one thought about the Congo atrocities, but every one followed in the wake of the master of the Congo settlements and watched him examining the cars and telling stories of his prowess or his enjoyment. Something of an expert was he, for he fancied a particular class of body, which he partly, if not entirely, invented, and, after a time, it came to be known and was celebrated as the "Roi dcs Beiges" body. A great traveller he was also, who thought nothing of motoring from Paris to one or other of his castles in Belgium in a single day. At his last visit he was in failing health, and the authorities accordingly made a special entrance for his motor-car, so that he could ride slowly round looking at the long lines of carjs ,and saying affable things to the people about.