A CAR presented by Adolf Hitler to a Nepali king is likely to be displayed in a palace museum after the Himalayan nation abolished its 239-year-old monarchy and ousted former king Gyanendra from the palace.
Officials said a 1939 Mercedes Benz presented by the Nazi leader to king Tribhuvan, Gyanendra's grandfather, is now rusting at the main Narayanhiti Palace in Kathmandu.
It has been there for more than three years, after an engineering college in the capital, which was using it to train mechanics, said it did not have enough money and spare parts to restore the antique vehicle.
But now efforts are being made to display it in the palace, which the government is turning into a museum.
The car was manually carried by scores of labourers for several days from Nepal's southern plains to Kathmandu in 1940, when the mountainous country had no roads.
Tribhuvan used the car when the Kathmandu valley had no other means of motor transport.
But after his death in the 1950s, the car gathered dust at the Thapathali Engineering Campus, which used it as a model to train the mechanics there.
