Yes!!! you have found the one! well done!
About the nicknames. Queen of Egypt is for sure correct. I dont know the Ali Baba part.
The second one is much the same as the first. Just "Beauty Queen"
so I am not bottering you any longer with this
Two well deserved points for you.
This is the story behind the car
From the banks of the Nile to vintage car catwalks, this is the fantastic story, part high craft part archaeology, of a 1913 Renault DG Victoria Rothschild as told by the restoration specialists at Renault's Histoire & Collection department.
But though intact, the Renault DG had suffered from the passing of time
The story began in the 90s when a Renault correspondent in Egypt called Renault’s Histoire & Collection department to tell them he had just discovered an exceptional DG model from 1913. The department, responsible for collecting and maintaining the brand's historic models, got straight down to work, pulling out all the stops to acquire and repatriate this marvelous find. The DG model in question is unique. It was ordered by the Egyptian government as a ceremonial vehicle for the inauguration of the Cairo Parliament. The body was customized by Etablissements Rothschild and tuned so that the driver could keep the speed of a march without having to use the clutch.
Major restoration work
H&C experts started major restoration work
A real challenge
For the Histoire & Collection department, headed by Hugues Portron, these salvage missions are an everyday occurrence. But the DG operation was special. “People regularly talk about sleeping beauties found hidden in barns,” says Hugues Portron. “But this beauty was slumbering under a dune.”
"One day a huge container arrived from Egypt,” an ex-H&C worker tells us. “We were astounded when we opened it and saw that the car was totally complete! Not a screw missing, like it was mummified – par for the course in Egypt, I suppose!” But though intact, the Renault DG had suffered from the passing of time, and so H&C experts started major restoration work.
“Renovating an old car requires the services of particular trades,” says Hugues Portron. “ For the hood of the DG, a shoemaker friend helped us find a tanner able to provide us with top-quality skins several millimeters thick. For the fabric, Renaults’ Design department helped us find a supplier who could produce 50 meters of wool sheet in a specific shade of blue. And in the waste-not-want-not spirit, leftovers from this fabric were used to renovate two of the taxis involved in the Marne evacuation of World War One.
Up on the catwalk
Beauty queen
The renovated DG returned to the public eye in its new career as a beauty queen. The staff at Histoire & Collection took on the role of impresarios, as one of them remembers: “After an appearance at the Rétromobile show in Paris, the beauty was invited to the very select Pebble Beach festival in California. But instead, the DG did the catwalk in the Vuitton beauty contest at the Bagatelle gardens in the Bois de Boulogne. And she would have taken top prize if it weren’t for an exhaust pipe screw that looked too new!”
Renault joins the big league
It's sure. This DG Renault is the queen of Egypt!
“With its work on the Egyptian (DG), Renault has joined the big league,” a famous restorer of vintage vehicles once said. This complement went straight to the heart of the Histoire & Collection team, who keep a close watch over their Egyptian queen. The DG is still in perfect shape and continues to make appearances, like the 650 other models in the Renault collection. From civilian to military to sporting vehicles, the power output of the vehicles in the collection ranges from 1.75 hp to 1,200 hp! But the DG is the only model to have walked in the footsteps of Cleopatra.
