Please choose: Lamborghini Espada or Ferrari 400/412

Pffff ... guess what, I like them both. Some very nice piccies here:

http://motoringconbrio.com/2013/10/29/please-choose-lamborghini-espada-or-ferrari-400412/

412 Spot

Ah, why not, another Youtube posting. This 412 spot was posted only a few days ago. By the looks of it this is in France. Formidable!

Pizza Guy!

Classic! It's a 400i phase 2 by the way ...

Ferrari 400 automatic brochure

Todays Ebay alert presented me this original 400 brochure. Even being in mint condition I find the asking price remarkably high. I'm glad I have this one already in my archive. I looked up some pictures to give you glimpse on the content. The nice thing is, my 400 has almost the same color settings, except I have a blue carpet instead of brown.

Hello Music Lovers

Yesterdays remark regarding the time period car radio triggered off a response. The person in question submitted me an advert about vintage Grundig car radio’s. With the purchase of the 400 I was lucky to have it equipped with the original radio. So for once I was not in desperate need or searching for a matching radio. Usually they tend to be upgraded with modern awful stereo’s which are not appropriate in my opinion. Other folks tell me they don’t need a radio as they rather listen to

the sound of the engine, so why bother. I only want it to be complete and do happen to appreciate radio’s and listening to music while driving. So, hereby the picture of the radio.

 

One small issue though, the brand Blaupunkt is clearly visible but the model name is missing?Strange. So I still had to do a little research in finding out which model I had. Where to start? The radio manual was missing and I did not wanted to remove the radio – as I potentially could damage something. On Internet (where else) I found the following website:

http://wegavision.pytalhost.com/blaupunkt.html containing a very nice overview of Blaupunkt catalogues for various years. Since my 400 is delivered in 1979 I had a look on that section and spotted it. It was a Heidelberg Stereo CR Super Arimat:

 

It was a top of the range model (I didn’t expect any different for a high-end car like this). Very cool. It does have ARI and honestly I had no idea what this meant. But now I do:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autofahrer-Rundfunk-Informationssystem

Furthermore I found the fully automatic sender search quite cool as well. I can imagine this must have been quite advanced technology in the late seventies. Not to mention the optional reverse tape winding. The Blaupunkt radio’s were awarded for their quality in the press. I got ahold of the following advert:

 

 

So what’s the story with that silly music cassette of Fausto Papetti on the picture you might ask yourself. Before I was looking into the F400 I was focussing on Maserati Indy’s. As such I got in contact with Candini as he had one for sale. Although I was only making an enquiry by email I think I ended up on their distro. I totally forgot about it and earlier this year I got an invite from them for some kind of exposition. I did not had any intention to attend but it was a nice trigger to visit them during the IHWC trip since we were staying in Modena this year. And so we did. We met both Giuseppe and Marcello and to my surprise the green Indy was still for sale. It was relocated at a different location for some minor fix. Marcello kindly freed up time for us and guided us to the other workshop. We got a tour in this workshop, which was quite impressive to say the least. As per tradition I made a small slideshow of both workshops:

 

Also we got to see the Indy in real life. What a beauty! Of course I went in the car to get a feel and to browse around. I noticed the radio and the music cassette in it. I was very curious about what kind of music an owner of such a car would listen to. To my surprise it was an original cassette from 1970 by Fausto Papetti. Likely this must have been in the car since. In order to memorize this I took a picture of it:

 

Funny enough one of the other guys took a picture of me when I made that picture. They told me they

found it remarkable I was making pictures of these unusual details.

 

As for Fausto Papetti, I never had heard of this bloke before.  But now I do:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fausto_Papetti

Of course I listened some of his records on Youtube and could picture myself driving this Indy with the easy listening saxophone music. Priceless. As such I had to have some Original MCs. Again this turned out to be a small challenge but succeeded nevertheless.

As for the Indy it has been sold and is now put up for sale again here:

http://www.hexagonclassics.com/details.asp?StockID=8102

As for Candini, you can find more details here:

http://www.maserati-indy.co.uk/alfieri71.htm

Oh, before I forget, if you run into the original manual of the Blaupunkt Heidelberg Stereo CR Super Arimat than please let me know.

Carello Fog Lights

Today I received my package from Germany. The Carello fog lights arrived.
Despite being very well packaged with air cushions it unfortunately happened
that one glass was broken. As you can imagine I'm very unhappy. Where can I
find new glass for this model? Sigh!

 

 

Dutch Red Ferrari 365 GT4 2+2

Today I received the following cool picture (and I welcome any other input/feedback about the 365/400/412):

With a bit of reverse engineering I found the Original website:

http://fancycribs.com/30870-stunning-design-for-a-villa-in-netherlands.html

As stated in a earlier post, this is the first car I visited on my hunt. The car itself was originally from South Africa and was imported to the Netherlands late eighties. It was owned by a esquire in Amsterdam for quite some years and then sold to Lou. The car had a massive stack of maintenance records. Around 100.000 km the engine had been completely overhauled by www.italauto.nl I have test driven it and the car handling felt good. Also it was recently serviced and had new tyres. The interior requires much attention as both chairs were worn out and teared open. The exhaust seemed Original but likely needed replacement soon or later. The front window was also poorly glued. It did had the optional sunroof and also a very nice Original 8-track car radio - cool!

 

 

The car has also been spotted via:

 http://www.autogespot.nl/ferrari-365-gt4-22/2007/10/25

Ferrari 400 Pouch / Wallet

I'm still on the hunt for the Original 400 manual pouch / wallet. Today another Ebay auction (UK) finished and I had good hopes. It seemed there was little attention for it and the occassional bid was still on the "low" end. But in the end someone had to ruine it and placed a steep bid. I can't believe the prices offered for these items. Ok, it does include the Original manual as well. But still. It was my understanding the 400 was the least desired Ferrari's on the market. So why the freakin high bidding. Stop it!

This is not an example on it's own, a few weeks ago a similar Ebay auction (USA) with the same high price outcome:

I have already the Original 400 manual and the other booklets. As that came with the car. So I'm only after the pouch. If you have one or know one affordable for sale I'm interested to hear from you. Some further pictures about the actual item:

Pre-owned Ferrari 400 - Kroymans selection

Today I did came across an old Ferrari 400 advert on the Kroymans website:

 

http://www.kroymans.nl/pre-owned/pre-owned-detail/4938988/Ferrari/400/automatic

 

A very nice example. I remember seeing it before but don’t recall the price tag. Likely it was somewhere between € 35.000 and € 40.000. Since Internet is quite a volatile medium I made a few snapshots of the pictures. Let’s add a few on todays blog update. Note the Kroymans import sticker.  To bad they removed the Original 400 automatic badge. It is equipped with the original toolkit though. A very cool Nardi steering wheel - however not original. I can’t tell what type of car radio is installed, despite having a cassette player I suspect it’s not time periode. Oh well.

 

Details

• Bouwjaar: 1977
• KM stand: 93.500 Km.
• Carrosserie: Coupé
• Kleur: Blauw
• Cilinderinhoud: 4.825 cc / 12 cilinders
• Brandstof: Benzine
• Vermogen: 250 kW (340 pk)
• Transmissie: Automaat

 

Car owner history

Previous postings were all retrospective. Today it's my first genuine actual live story.

This morning I checked my Linkedin updates and saw that mr. Vroklage checked  my profile. I'm unsure if this is done due to the fact I visited his Linkedin profile or because of the email I send them earlier this week. Hopefully he did got my message and is willing to provide more insight regarding the history of the 400.

To my surprise I got a Whatsapp from Arriën this afternoon. He submitted me the following remarkable picture:

I'm very happy with this as it's a nice contribution of supporting evidence. Note the Ferrari badge sticker added on the truck. As mentioned in the older posts, the previous owner did had a company called Deaval BV specialized in classic cars. It was based in Amsterdam and no longer exists. I searched on the internet but was unable to find anything. The owner was now based in a rental garage in Vinkeveen where he was restoring a truck for hobby purposes. In the same garage he still had quite a few of his motorbikes collection parked. His daily driver was a Mercedes C63 AMG and his favorite motorbike was his MV Augusta. The Ferrari was parked in another garage storage together with his remaining collection. According to the owner he still had a nice Rolls Royce which he would not sell.

At the time I announced my purchase on the Lancia Thema forum it was Arriën who recognized the car. He told me he had spotted it a few years ago nearby his parents in law - living in Loenen aan de Vecht. He had even pictures of it and of course some stories. It's a small world.

And by now I received an additional picture:

 

 

I now also remembered I made a picture of a car sticker on the back window. Unfortunately it's not a sharp picture, but it reveals their website as well: www.deaval.nl

I had it checked before but it's empty and only registered since 2005.

Tuesday 22nd October 2013 - Carello Foglights - Nebelscheinwerfer

As every day I do receive Ebay alerts about Ferrari 400 adverts. This time a very nice catch. There was a offer for 2nd hand Carello foglights. Yes! This was one of the few items that is missing on my 400. Even the price was reasonable acceptable. The advert specifically mentioned they were from a 400i. You have to know, there is a 400i phase 1 and phase 2. The phase 1 version, does have indeed the same lights as the Original 400. Some pictures to illustrate the difference:


Ferrari 400i Phase 1

 

Ferrari 400i Phase 2

And as can be seen in the Ebay advert, these were the correct ones for my 400:

 

 

Needless to say, I bought them instantly ...

Monday 22nd October - Car owner history

Today I did some further investigations regarding the previous owner. The last owner was a regular customer at Kroymans. But he also had his own company in classic cars at the time in Amsterdam. The name of it was Deaval. That company no longer exists and he was more or less cleaning out his private collection. The car itself was registered on the name of his son. When they placed the advert to sell the car they did mention it was previously part of the private collection of Frits Kroymans. By now this is more or less confirmed by mister Kroymans himself on our visit last Friday. Meanwhile I had found out already via the internet this was the case. When I told a friend about my purchase he almost found immediate evidence on the following website:

http://www.finecars.cc/en/editorial/article/news/kroymans-collection-the-netherlands/index.html

28 April, 2001

Ferrari Import Kroymans BV are the long time importer for the marque in The Netherlands, whilst the CEO Frederico Kroymans is a passionate classic car enthusiast, and was the overall winner of the Shell Historic Ferrari Maserati Challenge race series in 2001, driving his 250 GTO, chassis # 4757GT. He also has a fine private collection of some rare and beautiful Ferraris, which Edwin van Nes was able to access, to provide you with the images that you will find  in this gallery >>>

 

 

 

I also got in touch with Edwin van Nes and obtained the Original pictures. Cool!

 

 

The last owner also told me the car was traded in with the purchase of a new Ferrari Testarossa. As I know by now, this happens to be true as well. When I asked Frits about this he confirmed the story. He mentioned the name of the buyer and told me he was living in the east of the Netherlands and his occupation was doing business in furniture. We walked back to his office and he googled it up on his red Ferrari laptop. He furthermore mentioned that much later the owner died due to an accident in the Ferrari Testarossa. However he wasn't entirely sure about it. As for the 400 itself, he recalled the color settings and mentioned he had driven it occassionly himself as well. During the 15 years of his possesion it had been driven only occassionly. As far as I can track back about 10.000 km in 15 years time. The next owner drove about 7.000 km in 9 years time. I became owner of the car with about 98.000 km on it.

 

Yesterday I already did a quick search but could only find the following: http://www.vroklagemeubelen.nl/ In fact that was the same website that mr. Kroymans showed me as well when he searched on mr. Vroklage. I dropped them an email but had no response so far. I was not happy with my findings so I did some further research. The current  owner of the company is named George Vroklage. I found him on Linkedin but as he was out of reach I could not connect to him to send him a personal email. After doing a bit more indepth research I managed to find a website with a family tree created by a family enthusiastic. To my great surprise there was a link with much detailled information about Vroklage senior. Including scanned paper articles with memorials:

http://www.clicks4you.nl/joomla/index.php?%20option=com_content&task=view&id=88&Itemid=2

From this I learned he was quite a well known person at the time. I now understand why mr. Kroymans recalled this person almost instantly. The articles from the paper also confirmed the tragic death in his Ferrari Testarossa.

On the same website I found another email address. So I wrote up a more detailled request about my research regarding the history of the car. A bit weird to dig into this now, knowing the involved person died in a car crash. I hope they don't mind me asking all these details. According to the service booklet the car was Original purchased at Auto Becker in German and registered on the name of Fa Gottschalk in Kassel. It's not unusual expensive cars get registered on companies. This particular company was specialized in Textil. So I suspect there is a clear link between Furniture and Textil. My guess is that the car might have been part of a transaction deal or something. The car was from 1979 till 1988 (80.000 km) serviced and stamped for each interval by Auto Becker in Dusseldorf.

1979 Purchased by Fa Gottschalk & Co.
1988 Sold to Kroymans by George Vroklage - traded in for a Ferrari Testarossa. Mileage 80.000 km
2004 Sold to Mr. Veenendaal / Deaval. Mileage 92.000 km
2013 Sold to me. Mileage 98.000 km

 

 

 

 

 

Sunday 21st October 2013 - taxation report

Today I did receive the report but was not impressed with the outcome. The inspection itself was carried out by someone advised by the insureance company. I had no experience with this so I trusted all should be fine. The inspection was purely visual, not even a small test drive or such. I wonder how you can value such a car without doing a proper technical check-up but apparantly this is the standard. I did not agree with the outcome. As such he re-checked for me. In the end he considered the car comparable with a 400 currently offered at the Gallery in Brummen and therefore kept the valuated price the same. Again I did not agree to this. I did happen to have visited that car for inspection and I was not impressed by the state of it. It had teared window rubbers, the ceiling was hanging lose and lots of other small points. I also pointed out that I did happen to met the guy at the 400 club meeting in Brussel who sold the car to the Gallery, so I knew the price it was sold for. Furthermore this car is a newer injection model while I had a carb version. After further investigations he revalued the car for a price which I agreed desirable. At least that will allow me to purchase a decent example in the same condition in case of, god forbid, a fatal incident happens. The next time I will have it done by a independant Ferrari specialist.

Saturday 19th October 2013 - Auto Moto Italia Rosmalen

During the night I got awake by some youngsters making noise in the street. I clearly heared them shouting, hey look at that car. What kind is it? A Porsche? No, it’s a Ferrari. What??!!! There is a fucking Ferrari here in this street. I can't believe it. By then I was watching outside the window seeing 4 boys circling around the car. I have to make pictures to show to my dad else he will not believe this. After taking some pictures they left and I could go back to bed.

For today we planned to go to Auto Moto Italia in Rosmalen. As we signed up for the 50 Miglia course we had to wake up early to be in time for the start at Louwmans Exclusive at the A2. Which is not to far away from my house. Typical enough I had never been there before. I fancy the building very much. I pass it every day on way to the office. Now I had the chance to look inside. It was well organized so soon we were enjoying fresh coffee and had a walk around in the showroom. There was a very nice 412 for sale as well, unfortunately in red but in perfect condition. For those interested: http://www.louwmanexclusive.nl/select.php?id=6376545

Meanwhile the parking place was filled with other participants. A very nice mix of cars showed up.
It was a nice route and we enjoyed ourselves:

The exposition at Rosmalen was ok with more nice cars to see. As per tradition I made a compilation slideshow of some neat cars:

For those curious folks outhere. The music track is a newly made record by legend Giorgio Morodorer, named "the Race".

Oh, I almost forgot to mention. At the end of the day a red 365 GT4 2+2 showed up. I recognized it instantly. It happened to be the first car I visited on my hunt. It was owned by Lou Jedeloo in Amsterdam. If I remember correctly it was for sale for € 28.500. The new owners had put it on for sale again. At the moment it's still not listed on their website: http://www.classiccars.nl/ Their asking price is by the way a stunning € 48.000,-. In my opinion this car requires still a bit of work. The leather interior is complete worn out and teared to start with. Being fond of originality I learned that the 365 GT4 2+2 was not available in red, so it definately had been resprayed. For that kind of money this would be a better choice: http://viamarco.com/aanbod/430/ferrari-365gt4-22/

Checked my archive and have added a picture of the car in question, for the records:

At the end of the day we returned the car in the storage space. Potentially this was the last drive this year.

Friday 18th October 2013 - Taxation - Kroymans visit - IHWC meeting

Friday morning my Ferrari 400 did got a taxation. This was a requirement for the insureance.

Friday afternoon Jos arrived and we informed the IHWC crew about his visit. So shortly a meet up was arranged in Amsterdam at the Febo on the Olympic square. As there was enough time left we decided to drive over to Kroymans in Hilversum.

When we entered the showroom mr. Kroymans himself walked out of his office and greeted us. I told him that we were returning an old car from his collection. Basicly I was after more historic details of the previous owners. The car had been in his private collection from 1989 till 2004. To my surprise he recalled all details including the previous owner. Apparently the car was traded in on a new Ferrari Testarossa. We walked back to his office and he googled the name on his red Ferrari laptop. He found it instantly. As such I got ahold of the name of the previous owner. However it came with a sad story. The owner died a few years laters in his Ferrari Testarossa due to a crash.
Meanwhile Jos was guided by another employee and got ahold of an old Kroymans sticker from the eighties. Cool! I now can put this on the car to make the history more real.

 

 

I was very happy with this unplanned visit. I didn’t expect to meet mister Kroymans in person and getting some more historical background information and confirmation about this car. Clearly I had now to do more research but this was a great direction.

Thus now we went onto Amsterdam. Since we had plenty of time we decided to take a touristic tour via Muiden en Weesp. We arrived first and Jos treated ourselves on a nice Kroket.

Not much later Paul showed up and shortly afterwards Thomas. Even Mart drove all the way from Zeist and lastly Peter arrived as well. The latter two stayed and we went for a meal nearby Peter’s garagebox at a restaurnat called the Elsas. After a nice meal and some laughs we returned back home. Picking up the 400 at Peter’s garage box I offered him a small ride around the block. Boy, was he happy or what!

 

All in all a very enjoyable day.