Sunday 18 March 2018

Roadtrip to France

The roadtrip to France was another typical "Jos & Erwin" weekend. It just happened that Jos already planned a trip to the Netherlands that weekend to combine work and private related matters. With him he also brought a Lancia Kappa SW on a trailer. This car was bought remotely by Paul, who is one of the IHWC members, in Swiss. Jos was so kind to had it temporary parked at his house and it would have been picked up by Paul at a later stage. That same weekend Paul did happen to celebrate his birthday on Saturday evening in Amsterdam which we were going attend. As a surprise Jos had brought the car with him on the trailer and had it parked at my place and we handed over the keys to Paul on his birthday party.


On Saturday itself we had made some remarkable car visits and attended some garages. The first one was actually in my town and had some interesting cars on stock in the showroom


When talking to the owner he was so kind to show us the shop and we got to see more exotic beauties:


It turned out he had another large stock/storage location elsewhere in town which we were informed about. When driving to the place we took a turn as I wanted to show Jos the Alfa Romeo garage annex hobby club. I had never been inside but it was an old "Renault" garage which was now owned by an Alfa Romeo nutter who had it stuffed with old Alfa's and outside a lot of restorations objects. 

We did happen to find an Original correct set of Alfa 75 rims and a nice set of Alfa Romeo logo signs. Jos made me a nice trade deal (on the Alfa logo) for the Thema 8.32 rearwindow blindings I gave to fix his car. Cool!


Also this owner was so kind to offer us a tour in his storage. It turned out he had another storage location in walking distance which we visited as well. In the past he used to buy all kinds of parts of Alfa garages that stopped or went bankrupt. Loads of parts both new and used and mostly 70/80/90 stuff. He even had some SZ body parts. Below just a few random pictures to give you an impression of the location:





In a garage next to it but on the same location there was another Alfa addict detailing his GTV. Incredible job and a stunning car.




Barely recovered from this visit we went to another place of a guy we met on FB who shares the same car passion with us. I was looking forward to finally visit him in person. Again a remarkable visit with another car nutter. It's almost a repeat, we got another tour and he explained in detail about his cars and the ones he was restoring for customers (his profession). He had quite a variety of interesting cars. Below just two examples



We had to hurry back as we were running late. The missus had prepared a nice dinner and shortly afterwards we went to Amsterdam. And you guessed it, on that party there were obviously a lot more car geeks, so the day would end with more car talk. We could not make it late as we had to wake up early in the morning to drive to France. At least from the above you will now understand a little better our background and car interest.

As said, we left early in the morning around 7:30 and drove to a place nearby Paris


 And of course a small break for a croissant and coffee.


During the travel we had lots of rain but nearby Paris it became dry again and eventually it became sunny. That way:


Getting close now, on the peripherique


During the trip I had made contact a few times with the seller to confirm our ETA. And we did arrive on time without any hassle. On arrival there were quite a few persons available to welcome us. More about that on the next blog. 

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