Bucharest Hosts Classic Car Parade

Yoana Vodenicharova, BTA correspondent Martina Gancheva

A snapshot of the parade (BTA Photo)

Bucharest,

28.04.2024 16:59

(BTA)

Bucharest’s Lumea Copiilor park hosted the 26th spring classic car parade organized by the Retromobil Club Romania on Sunday. The event was attended by thousands of locals and tourists, eager to take pictures of more than 200 vehicles produced between the 1920s and 1990s.

One of the most attractive cars at the event was a Mercedes W21(200). It was commissioned in 1935 by a German army general, the car owner told BTA. The vehicle was delivered to the general a year later, when he took it to Romania for his son's wedding to a Romanian girl and gifted it to the bride's father. The Mercedes was sold to its current owner in 2000 and although he got hold of it quickly, it took him a long time to restore it.

Another car with an interesting history was the 1983 Reno Fuego GTX built in France for the Ceaușescu family. Nicolae and Elena Ceaușescu gifted it to their daughter Zoia on the occasion of her marriage to professor Mircea Oprean.

A Dacia 1410 Sport, produced in 1986, also grabbed the attention of the parade's visitors. The car owner's first trip abroad was to Bulgaria in 2015. A year later, he went on to visit Hungary, Slovakia, Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, and Serbia, travelling 4,060 km in 18 days. In 2017, he toured Greece, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, and Czechia, covering 10,104 km in 37 days. Invited to visit France’s La Douze in 2019, he expanded the list of countries to include Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Italy, Sweden, Monaco, Andorra, Luxembourg, and Liechtenstein, thus travelling another 8,986 km in 29 days.

There were also lines of people waiting to have their picture taken in front of a 1939 Fiat Torpedo 1100, a 1975 Lincoln Continental whose value is currently estimated at USD 55,800, and a 1967 Fiat 1800, one of the most expensive cars in socialist Romania, which sold for some RON 89,000 at the time.

During the parade, visitors had the opportunity to take a closer look at a variety of Romanian ARO and Dacia SUVs.

Special attention was devoted to George Burianu, a Romanian racing car driver born in Braila. "At only 16 years of age, he left home driven by his passion for cars, even though they were a rarity at the time. He came in second in the 1929 Monaco Grand Prix, a unique performance for a Romanian in Formula One," the parade’s organizers told BTA.

The Retromobil Club Romania was founded in 1998 and is currently the largest association of its kind in Romania, with a total of 4,500 members and 41 branches organizing over 180 events annually. In the twenty-six years since its founding, the organization has certified more than 11,000 classic vehicles.

Classic car parades were also held in five other cities in Romania on Sunday.

/IV/