King Baudouin's parade Cadillac was once sold for 2,500 Belgian francs
The Cadillac that carried a 21-year-old king through Liège and Namur is for sale at Zoute
Broad Arrow will offer King Baudouin's 1951 Cadillac Series 62 Convertible at the Zoute Concours Auction on Friday 9 October, on the Green Grounds at the Approach Golf in Knokke-Heist, after two viewing days on 7 and 8 October. The car is sold without reserve and estimated at 40,000 to 70,000 euros. It is the second piece of Belgian royal motoring in the same week, after Leopold III's Bugatti Type 59 Sports was confirmed for the Concours d'Élégance, and it is by far the cheaper of the two.
The Series 62 left New York on 11 September 1951, four days after Baudouin turned 21
Baudouin took the constitutional oath on 17 July 1951, the day after Leopold III abdicated, at the age of 20. He turned 21 on 7 September. Four days later this convertible was shipped from New York to General Motors Continental in Antwerp, so it reached the country two months into his reign. It is a third-generation Series 62, the 1948 design with the first tailfins and a 5.4-litre V8 of around 160 hp. Cadillac built 6,117 of the 1951 convertibles at close to 4,000 dollars each, and this one arrived with flag holders on the bonnet.
The Liste Civile registered it, and the Paleis der Academiën was its address
The paperwork is what makes the lot. Period photographs show the young king in the car on Joyous Entries to Liège, Namur and Brussels in 1952, and to Arlon and Hasselt in 1953, the ceremonial visits that followed his accession. An ownership document from December 1954 gives the Paleis der Academiën, beside the Royal Palace in Brussels, as the registered address, and the registration names the Liste Civile as the first Belgian keeper. That detail matters more than it looks: the Civil List is the state allowance that funds the monarchy's official work, so this was the crown's parade car rather than Baudouin's private one.
2,500 Belgian francs in 1976 is about 62 euros, or roughly 300 euros in today's money
In 1976 the family of the present owner bought the Cadillac from another collector, and the invoice is still in the file: 2,500 Belgian francs. At the fixed conversion rate of 40.3399 francs to the euro that is 61.97 euros, and Belgian inflation since 1976 turns it into roughly 300 euros today. The car then stayed with the same family for 50 years and shows fewer than 55,000 km.
A 1951 Series 62 Convertible with no king in its file sells for around 61,000 dollars
Public auction records for the 1951 Series 62 put the median result for the convertible body at 61,050 dollars, from a spread of 27 recorded sales between 11,250 and 107,250 dollars. Broad Arrow's 40,000 to 70,000 euro band therefore sits inside the ordinary market for the model. The royal history has been priced at close to nothing, which is the opposite of what Ayrton Senna's Honda NSX is asking in London on 31 October, where a 500,000 pound floor stands on a car that normally trades for a fraction of that.
Leopold III's Bugatti and Baudouin's Cadillac share a week in Knokke-Heist
The father's car is a 1934 Type 59 Sports, chassis 57248, bought by Leopold III in 1937 and painted black with a yellow stripe at Molsheim to his own order, a Pebble Beach Best of Show winner shown on the Approach Golf on 10 and 11 October. The son's car is a mass-produced American convertible the state bought for parade duty. They bracket the Zoute Car Week, whose two auctions run from a 4 million euro LaFerrari to a no-reserve Miura. The Cadillac will be the cheapest royal car in Knokke-Heist by a very wide margin.
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Broad Arrow has priced the king out of this Cadillac, and that is the honest way to sell it. Provenance moves a price when the person made the choices: Leopold specified his Bugatti's paint at the factory, and Senna's NSX was a gift he drove for years. Baudouin was driven in the back of a car the Civil List owned for two seasons of ceremonial visits, and the documents that make the lot credible are the same documents that show he never owned it. Auction rooms pay for a person's decisions, not for a person's presence.
On 9 October the hammer price will say whether Belgian bidders agree. Anything above 70,000 euros means the room paid for the 1952 photographs of Liège and Namur. A result inside the estimate means it paid for a well-kept Series 62 with an unusually good file. Either way the family that wrote out 2,500 francs in 1976 will learn what half a century of keeping every piece of paper was worth, and the answer will be somewhere between 600 and 1,100 times what they paid.
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