Qui était la princesse Victoria et qu'est-il arrivé à sa voiture ?

You can read a press report: “Princess Victoria, A Miniature Motorist” on the bottom right of the front page of the August 3rd 1912 New York Clipper Theatrical Journal and search it for a bit more about her and her agent’s plans, here: https://ia800304.us.archive.org/19/items/clipper60-1912-08/clipper60-1912-08.pdf

Princess Victoria, then on the Canadian leg of a world tour was said to have watched the building of the car “with all the intelligence and care of the most confirmed motorist” and “had been instructed in driving by some of the most famous automobile drivers in the country” but accepted she was too small to drive it. Its caricature white Hansom cab bodywork, with red leather and crimson silk interior, was mounted where the fuel tank and trunk usually were behind the seat tub of an otherwise standard-looking 1911-12 Cole, two-passenger roadster. This four-cylinder model had outside gear and brake levers, and right-side steering until 1913. A surviving car like it is not listed on the Cole Motor Car Registry website.

The footman in the photos, 7ft 2ins tall A. J. Wagner and the chauffeur Mr. Guernsey, both wore blue liveries, white breeches, jack-boots and top hats.

Abrahams, Victoria’s agent, appears to be in the driver’s seat in one photo. He may have signed her up even before she appeared in Britain at London’s Festival of Empire Exhibition in May 1911, although this was the first year she was reported to have visited North America and also when Abrahams advertised in the British press for what the public at the time was eager to pay to see: “DoubIe-bodied, extraordinary fat and tiny people, and all kinds of interesting freaks to tour the world with Charles M. Abrahams’ Greater Platform Shows” - so much for what passed for wholesome entertainment in the good old days!

Abrahams remained her agent only until November 1912, when the New York Times reported that “a man believed to be Charles M. Abrahams of New York, killed under his auto in Texas”. By 1915, Princess Victoria was in North America with a new agent, “well-known impresario Mr. Baum” but she died of peritonitis in the Stern Hospital N.Y. in April 1917, by when she had lost the $250,000 she had earned because of later mismanagement by her agents. In her obituary, the N.Y.T. confirmed Abrahams died in Houston in 1912.

The Cole Motor Company used a motoring celebrity for more product endorsement a couple of years later: René Thomas, the French racing driver and pioneer aviator who won the Indianapolis 500 driving a Delage in 1914. Cole said that they loaned him a car to drive around the city for a few days. They boasted he was impressed by their “standardized” (meaning top quality bought-in parts) car and told the press he had personally congratulated Joseph Jarrett Cole, Company President, on the “smooth running, quiet Cole Four” they lent him. They evidently decided they had better not let him loose in their new six…

She was also known as the miniature Madame Melba