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