A local classic car club organized a sightseeing tour for owners of a car older than 25 years, regardless the brand. The starting point was in a village just a few miles from my place. Unsurprisingly, almost all cars were much older than 25 years. Visiting shows is great, but capturing classics in a more natural environment is even better. Speaking of which, does the Chevrolet above look out of place? Not to me, it blends in perfectly.
As a matter of fact, this 1979 Chevrolet Impala has been driving around in the Netherlands since the day of its first registration.
It doesn’t get much better than this, a first owner 1981 Datsun Laurel 2400. I actually saw its first owner drive away later on, my impression was that he was well (as in way) into his eighties.
1973 Jaguar XJ6-4.2.
Three senior Germans, let’s have a closer look.
1984 Mercedes-Benz 280 CE. Sweet coupe with an inline-six.
1973 Opel Kadett B Special. It’s a well known fact that Opel Kadett (any generation) was German automotive jargon for the best selling car in the Netherlands.
1964 Mercedes-Benz 190.
1972 Citroën Méhari.
1971 Fiat 500 L, 1984 Citroën 2CV, 1972 Citroën 2CV.
1976 Volkswagen Beetle convertible, hiding in front of the 1972 2CV.
1974 Volkswagen Beetle 1600.
We might as well enjoy the scenery and old buildings, while walking by the colorful automobiles. On the left the current Roman Catholic church, on the right the former Roman Catholic church.
The old church dates back to the 14th century. It has been in private hands since 2007 and now accommodates a spiritual center. The current church was built in 1909-1910.
If you want to see more pictures, just google Kerkpad 2 (former church) and Kerkpad 7 (current church), Horssen.
The most durable family car ever built in a European plant, a Mercedes-Benz 200 D, W123-series. This one is from 1977.
An extremely rare CitroĂ«n 2CV “duck rod” Harlequin limited edition, only offered in 1987.
This 1982 Citroën 2CV wears a more common outfit.
Oh look, a churchgoing 1981 Citroën Méhari.
…Super Bee!!…
1988 Renault 4, prepared for long trips. The R4, a downright legend.
1983 Fiat Spider 2000.
1961 Cadillac Coupe de Ville.
1959 Mercedes-Benz 190 SL.
1962 Opel Rekord P2 Caravan (that’s the wagon), the house is too nice to leave out.
The last one for today, while walking back to my own car I caught this 2008 Mercedes-Benz S-Class 320 CDI.
Nice pix – just some random thoughts:
Always loved the Caprice. I remember a school mate´s parents had one in two-tone blue metallic…first a sedan then a station wagon. When they did the school run with those boats in the early 80s it caused a commotion outside on the school parking lot. Those cars looked gargantuan when parked in front of their tiny “Reihenhaus”.
Once, her parents drove us back home from her birthday party. Three young teenage kids sitting on the rear bench and still so much space left between us. Will never forget that smooth, cushy, totally silent ride. Such a difference when compared to European cars.
The Nissan Laurel…totally contemporary 80s style. Just recently saw a sales ad on the internet for a Diesel version. 12.000€ ! Can you believe it?
Remember when the Laurel was launched in Europe some 5 or 6 yrs earlier still under the Datsun brand name? Looked like a shrunken US car with those 4 square head lamps and the chrome radiator grille. Sporting a 1975s design for 1980!
“Cheapest 6 cylinder car” available in Germany did all the ad campaigns boast.
As much as I love me some Jaguar XJs…but these cars will never be true headturners to random onlookers, no matter which MY. They are too much of a ubiquitous sight after all those years in production…its a VW Käfer situation.
Johannes, just another thought.
Just a few days ago while browsing through http://www.mobile.de it boggled my mind just HOW many Dutch vintage car dealers there are around these days.
I understand that a couple yrs back the Dutch government eliminated the tax break for cars with a minimum age of 25 yrs.
But how come that in a densely populated small country such as NL with heavy traffic on all roads there is such an enormous love for older cars?
A genuine oldtimer (that’s a car, not a man) is at least 40 years old. No road tax, regardless weight and type of fuel. Safety- and technical inspection every two years.
Apart from that, something like the R4 or the 2CVs are very cheap to drive; they’re lightweights and gasoline powered, so the road tax is close to nothing anyway. And they’re gas sippers in the finest French tradition…
Indeed, it used to be 25 years. Especially old diesel Benzes (W123/W124/W201) became too popular as daily drivers, instead of pure hobby vehicles. And that was the end of the 25 years rule.
By the way, there’s plenty of room to enjoy driving a classic car, especially in the south, east and north. Not the whole country is a Disneylandish downtown Amsterdam. Thank goodness. Besides, usually classic cars don’t drive on the main roads during rush hours.
When I was looking for american malaise iron, I was taken aback by the number of late 70’s to late 80’s Caprices, Centuries, Cutlasses and so forth for sale in the Netherlands. With LPG fuel systems to boot !
I started considering bringing one to France, thinking, well, Europe, free trading, free movement of goods, and stuff.
It was so complicated that I started looking if it wouldn’t be more convenient to create a company in the Netherlands, who would have owned the car…
Booming business here: importing modern cars, especially from Germany. An example, the black Benz S-Class in the article had its first registration in January 2008, its first registration in the Netherlands was in April 2017. So an imported car. You can do it yourself, or you can have it done by a specialist.
Remember folks: in the long run, free trade results in prosperity and a competitive and innovative economy/industry.
Some great stuff here Johannes.
The concentration of 2CVs really brings back memories of our family trip to the Netherlands in 1979. To twelve year old me it seemed like an endless round of visiting old ladies and drinking tea, but I had a great time looking at all the cars, particularly the 2CV and VW Polo which we never got in Canada.
I think the church going Mehari has some stylistic sins to confess, but choice of color isn’t one of them 🙂
That 59 Mercedes is such a beautiful design, only hampered by the 2 huge vertical bars on the rear bumper. They ruin the flow of the body down to that otherwise elegant, albeit useless rear bumper. They look like afterthoughts like when the 5mph bumpers were first mandated in the states. I don’t know if I just never noticed them before on classic SL’s or what. But then again, I’ve probably only seen one or two in person my whole like and I’ve always been so captivated by front end I may have just missed them.
What a great variety. I would love that Cadillac but for the whitewalls that are much, much too wide. A neighbor kid bought one of these from an elderly client of his attorney father in the late 70s, about the time I had my 63 Fleetwood. His Coupe DeVille was a silver blue car with a white roof and must have been a real stunner in its day.
There is nothing like a shiny silver or gray Mercedes with red leather. And you found at least two of them.
Sorry but 77-79 Chevy sedans still make me yawn. 🙂 But then they were always common as dirt here.
Is it too late to reference the Datsun Yanni? Yes? OK, sorry then…
The Impala doesn’t look at all out of place, but the setting doesn’t look all that distinctly “Dutch” and to the extent it does it’s Dutch in a traditional enough way that the building wouldn’t look out of place in, say, the Hudson Valley.
Great pictures , the standout cars for me are:
The Jag XJ6, had the Daimler version and loved that car, the inch band tyres and bonnet mascot do not belong, but the shape has aged really well in my eyes
Mercedes W123 Coupe, so elegant and I could happily use one of those as a daily driver
190SL, no real go but so nice to cruise around in, the 190 saloon does not look anywhere near as good as the 220 with the domed headlights, but that vertical speedometer brings back memories
By contrast the 2008 Mercedes looks awful, along with rust and quality issues of the post 95 cars, how the mighty have fallen, dam shame
One of the benefits of older cars in the UK is their immunity from road tax once they reach 40 year old , a post 2006 3 litre plus car typically costs ÂŁ530 pa to tax, my current 2002 Peugeot 406 Pininfarina coupe costs ÂŁ315 pa to tax
My favorite is the Opel Rekord P2 wagon. Sitting in front of that house it’s the most convincing facsimile of a vintage photograph.
I’m intrigued by the Impala being a Netherlands car since new, and it prompts me to ponder some questions about GM’s international distribution:
• Was this car available by special order only in Europe?
• Interesting that it was an Impala and not a Caprice.
• Also looks to be a very loaded Impala with vinyl top, bumper guards and trim strips, full exterior moulding package–very heavy exterior option load for the base big sedan.
• The gray exterior color looks like the darker gray that was only available as the lower part of the silver/gray two-tone option. Was this a special order color for the whole car? Or was the color palette different for export models?
So the humble ’79 Impala becomes a Dutch puzzle!
There were multiple Dutch importers and dealerships of US cars, mainly concentrated in the western part of the country.
My guess is that the Chevy was first used as a taxi or as a family car (quite literally…) in funeral processions. Note that a large number of our hearses was based on Chevy wagons. The one below is still in service, I found it on a website of an undertaker.
A local funeral parlour has a 75 clamshell Chevy still in service its mint and given its current useage should last forever if you guys are right about them.
I can answer a couple of questions…
General Motors has its own export programme, selling the vehicles produced in North America to other countries, including Europe. The European branch, located in Switzerland, imports and distributes North American vehicles. It used to have a retrofitting centre in Belgium or the Netherlands where the North American vehicles were modified to meet ECE regulations. Today, the export vehicles are assembled at the factories along with US/Canada vehicles.
As Johannes stated before, whatever General Motors (and to the extend, Ford and Chrysler) didn’t export to Europe is imported and sold by the specialists. Thus, Impala rather than Caprice. An obvious clue is lack of OEM export taillamps and flagpole mirrors on this grey Impala. The photo below shows the export taillamps.
The biggest difference between official GM and grey imports is the manufacturer’s warranty not honoured for the latter imports. The import specialists assume the responsibility and cost of servicing the vehicles.
I have admired Opel Kadetts, preferably the sedan models, for quite a while. For some odd reason I don’t appreciate the later models/replacements nearly as much.
At first glance I thought that the Datsun/Nissan Laurel was a European market Stanza. They look similar but the Stanza never had a 6 cylinder engine, or at least I don’t remember it having one in the North American market.
Most of the cars pictured here look to be quite practical when they were new, but now they look like they would be fun cars.
No, the Laurel was a bigger car, slotted above the Stanza and the then Bluebird (180B/810). One of these same Laurels has recently resurfaced in Barbados. It’s white and automatic, like most of the ones sold here. Ironically too, it hails from the parish of St. John, where the salt spray often wreaks havoc with cars, but it only has a bit of surface rust on it, suggesting that it only came in recently or it was probably garaged for most of its life.
Your comment about the Impala being a possible funeral coach kind of made sense. When I first looked at it I kind of thought the colour combo was a bit odd compared to the Impalas we had here in Canada.
Then when I thought of the cars used here by funeral homes in that era they were usually the same type of sedate look.
The difference was they were Cadillacs, Lincolns New Yorkers and type.
I guess there a North American Impala would still be a prestige car whereas here most people would be shocked to have ” just a Chevy” being used in that role.
I’d be interested in Johannes’ take on that. In the UK I suspect it would just be seen as ‘big’. Most wouldn’t know what it was, they would probably guess American but have little idea if it was a prestigious model or not. Clearly American cars were more common in Holland though.
UK funeral cars are almost always stretched, with maybe 8 seats inc the front two. In the late 70s they might be very stately Daimler limos, but just as likely stretched Fords – as plebeian as could be. After Ford dropped the Scorpio the main coachbuilder started using Aussie Fairlanes for hearses and limos. As they had no blue ovals on them, I’m sure nobody knew what they were and thus were unable to place them in any hierarchy.
Not even a Caprice at that.
Chevrolets, Cadillacs and Lincolns were widely used (most common, as a matter of fact) in the Dutch funeral business. Hearse conversions and stretch-jobs were done by specialized coachbuilders.
Have a look here (click on the pictures for an enlargement):
http://www.tap-rouwvervoer.nl/fotoarchief/
Wow, that looks like a good driving day out!
First thought is to go with the Jaguar – the series 1 had the low bumper that is ageing pretty well now, though the Mercedes 190SL looks good for when the sun shines. The Opel wagon looks quite a find too, as does the Cadillac, but I suspect the Jaguar would won out for me. It seems an unusual colour for an XJ also.
The pictures deserve a second study, as there are some nice cars in the backgrounds too. Are any of them yours Johannes?
Roger, no, none of them are mine.
I used my daily driver for a short visit. About 15 to 20 minutes or so after I took these pictures, all cars were gone (driving the tour).
An untouched 1979 Chevrolet Impala. Absolutely refreshing nowadays.
Johannes: Thanks for posting. As you can imagine, the Chevrolet and the Cadillac don’t much interest this American who has seen both time and time again.
What does intrigue me is the European iron we never got in the USA. And though it is a unique car, the Mehari is not the one I’m thinking about.
What I noticed was the 123 280CE from 1984. That too was forbidden fruit. By the final several model years that body was available here only as a diesel with and automatic. I’d have opted for the gasoline dohc six; hopefully this Euro one has a manual transmission too (never sold with a gas six 123 here).
That red Nissan Laurel has a close resemblance to an Opel Senator of the same vintage.
What is that little blue (kit?) car to the right of the Vee Dub in photo 22?
That’s a Burton, based on the CitroĂ«n 2CV.
https://www.burtoncar.com/?language=en&sort=2a
Thank you for the wonderful pictures. Comparing the Kadett and XJ highlights how important the wheel size to body height ratio is. XJ looks stunning, Kadett hideous with its tiny wheels.