François Hollande’s old scooter will be put on sale during the 36th “Garden party” sale organized by the Rouillac auction house on May 26. Once a year, the Rouillac auction house takes over a castle in the Loire Valley to hold an auction. This year, the meeting will take place at the Château d’Artigny in Indre-et-Loire. The scooter will be priced alongside other extraordinary historical objects including a century-old bottle of Romanée-Conti or the painting by the French painter, Auguste Renoir, A Little Blonde Bather.
To acquire the gray Piaggio MP3 125 cm³ from 2009, bidding will start at 10,000 euros. For comparison, a new identical scooter costs between 5000 and 7000 euros. So what justifies such a price? The vehicle “has nothing of a national racing car” however, it enters the “category of legendary vehicles, as it tells the French the story of a man like any other and of a torn nation between its desire for power and the observation of its downgrading,” assures the Rouillac auction house in a press release.
On January 1, 2014, the former President of the Republic was photographed on a scooter by the celebrity press in front of actress Julie Gayet’s building while he was officially in a relationship with journalist Valérie Trierweiler. The scoop, revealed by Closer magazine, triggered a media vaudeville whose epilogue was the separation of the head of state from his partner. Ten years later, the frame remains anchored in the history of François Hollande’s five-year term.
The Élysée separated from the scooter in December 2015 during the Domaine’s auction, two years after the so-called “Gayetgate” affair. The three-wheeler passed from hand to hand until reaching its current owner, Patrick Sionneau. The retiree, proud of his acquisition, published a notebook to retrace the history of what he calls the “scooter of love”. The former head of state dedicated this work: “To Patrick and Manola, who had the chance to ride my scooter to better share their happiness!”