An old Renault car that once belonged to the wife of Stalinist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu fetched less than $1,800 at an auction sale held Monday.
Elena Ceausescu, who held a variety of senior posts under communism, had given the Renualt 16 medium-size sedan to family members shortly before the 1989 popular uprising during which she and her husband were summarily tried and shot.The battered car later changed hands repeatedly. It last belonged to police in the Transylvanian city of Brasov, who organized Monday's auction.
Local journalists identified the successful bidder as a pensioner who paid $1,795 for the car, which had been kept on blocks since 1994 for lack of spare parts.
Post-communist authorities confiscated more than 40 palaces, mansions and hunting lodges the Ceausescus had used during their 24-year rule, when they lived in luxury while preaching austerity for ordinary Romanians.
Hundreds of bottles of rare wines and spirits from the Ceausescu collections have been sold at public auctions over the past seven years.