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Witnessed numerous vintage & costly cars at InterClassic Car Show 2023

The theme of this year's event was Formula 1 & hence Max Verstappen's 2021 season-winning F1 car was showcased.

BHPian Jeroen recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

A few days ago I visited the Interclassics car show in Maastricht, together with my friend and model car connaisseur Berndt.

This show is considered to be amongst the top classic car shows in Europe. As with just about all car shows the last couple of years, previous years had been cancelled due to Corona Restriction. This was the first time since Covid, the show was on again.

Every year they have a special theme. This year it was about the F1 car that has raced over the years on the circuit of Zandvoort.

It is the same organisation that also organises the Brussel Interclassic show. Berndt and I visited that as well a few months ago.

Berndt and I drove south on a Friday morning. Maastricht is the most southern part of the Netherlands. Germany to the east, Belgium to the west. It is a very nice town. I can highly recommend staying there and in that area of the Netherlands. It is about an hour and 45 minutes drive from where Berndt and I live. All motorway. Pretty boring. We had booked our tickets online. You get a special discount, and because of our age, we get a bit extra discount. But tickets for these events are not cheap, about Euro 18 (INR 1600) and parking for the day costs about the same!

There are hundreds and hundreds of classic cars. Most of these images I took because the car in special was a bit special (well, at least I thought so).

Most classic car enthusiasts will be familiar with the brand Austin Healey. However, before Austin and Healey got together, Healey produced a couple of other quite remarkable cars, often in cooperation with other brands.

This is a 1947 Westland Healey Roadster. Only 64 were made. Build between 1946 and 1950. This particular car came to the Netherlands in 1999 from the USA and has Dutch plates. It participated in the Mille Miglia six times between 2008 and 2018.

Price: Eur 189.000 (INR 16700000)

A Jaguar 100SS

A gorgeous Bentley!

There were quite a few Bugattis about. You will see a few more. This is a replica, made to 75% scale of the original model! The guy who build this had built several of these. It has a little petrol engine and a maximum speed of about 60 km/h. Bugatti themselves have been making these 75% replicas as well:

I can’t remember what this is, but it is yellow and very unusual. It was on the stand of the Auto Moto d’epoch in Italy. A huge classic car event I still need to visit. It is on my to-do list, so it will happen sometime!

Here is another Healey variant, a Nash Healey!

These days, almost unavoidable at any classic car event, there will be some punters to try and sell you an electric conversion. Purist classic car enthusiast will spit on it of course. But if anything it will make your 2CV go like stink!

I thought this was pretty unusual, don’t think I have come across it before.

From the very early beginning of motor cars, not really my cup of tea, but always very photogenic.

As I mentioned at the beginning, the theme for this year's event was the F1 cars that have been driven on the circuit of Zandvoort. They managed to assemble quite a few interesting cars. I am not at all a fan of F1, it just doesn’t hold my interest. When I was in my teens I did watch F1 now and then.

And I remember very well the unveiling of what became known as the John Player Special (JPS). Tamiya made a gorgeous model kit and it was the only F1 car I ever build.

It is difficult to imagine the impact the JPS had in those days. Car manufacturers started to offer the JPS versions of whatever car or model they could think of. Endless accessoires in JPS colour scheme. I am not a fan of black cars at all. But this JPS is still absolutely stunning!

This is the 1976 Lotus Ford which was driven by Gunnar Nilsson. 2993cc V8 engine, 5 speeds, weight 576kg, 465BHP and a top speed of 305 km/h.

They also had a slightly more recent JPS driven by Nigel Mansell

As you can imagine this F1 car drew a large (Dutch) crowd. It is Max Verstappen's 2021 F1 car.

But again, these sort of cars and current F1 racing simply does not float my boat.

This is what a proper F1 car should look like!

And now for something completely different. This is a 1971 Citroen SM. These cars have a Maserati V6 engine! This particular one was presented to USSR President at the time Brezjnev by the French government during a state visit.

Another very unusual car. This is Talbot Samba in a rally variant. You would be very hard-pressed to find a Samba, any Samba these days. It is very rare to come across them even at these sorts of events. We had one when we lived in Brighton, UK in the early eighties. It was my wife’s car and to date, it has been the only car we bought new.

The Samba is also a good example of the fact that just because something is rare doesn’t make it valuable. Even if you could find a Samba it would not be worth much at all. This, being a Rallye version with a bit of provenance is probably worth a bit more.

A little less rare, but a hell lot more valuable are these little Fiat 500 with the top cut off.

As always lots of Ferraris about. I did not take any images of the Ferrari cars, but being the nerdy engineer I did take an image of this Ferrari engine on display.

This is a Ferrari 12-cylinder V12-65o. 5474cc, 486HP and a staggering 568Nm torque.

Of course, any classic car show will feature some VW Beetles. My first car was a Beetle I bought for fifty Dutch guilders when I was 18. Earning fifty guilders took two weeks of delivering about 250 newspapers between 05-07 AM in the morning.

Love these Bentleys. Did not like the grey colour on the one in the front. But it was an original Paris-Dakkar car, so I would assume that was the original colour.

Some more details on the cockpit of these sorts of cars, pieces of art!

A few more cockpits.

This is the cockpit of a Dutch car, a Spijker!

How about the cockpit of this very special Faces Vega Excellence Ex2 from 1962. also, notice the suicide doors!

Here is another view of the Spijker and toward the rear another Bugatti. This one was probably the most expensive car on display. Eur 1.350.000 (INR 118000000).

We had a little chat with these guys. Burton is a Dutch company that builds these retro-looking little cars. They are all based on Citroen 2CV as a donor car.

It is still one of the most affordable and easy ways of getting into an open-top car. They have a very strong a loyal following. And the owners are true diehards, always driving top down, no matter what the weather.

The company was recently sold to a French company 2CV Mehari Club Cassis. Which is probably an excellent match and ensures continuousion for current and future owners.

No classic car show would be complete with a few Citroen DS thrown in, so here you are:

And finally, another quite rare and unusual car. This is a 1938 Panhard Dynamic

Berndt and I spend about five hours roaming around. The show was not up to its old format yet. A couple of the renowned Dutch classic car restorers were missing. Also, we felt that there were fewer market stalls selling tools, parts accessories and all that sort of stuff.

We stopped in Valkenburg on the way home for a nice dinner and some drinks. In all, a very worthwhile and enjoyable day out.

Check out BHPian comments for more insights and information.

 
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