restoration of TB-81-ZT

February 4th 2012 I went all the way up north of the Netherlands after a call from a very enthusiastic 130 owner, Nico.I knew Nico for quite a long time and he was owner of 4 coupe’s and one saloon 3200. Due to circumstances the plan was to sell off most of his cars and so it happened I bought 3 coupe’s and this one was one of them.

A very special car I remember when I saw it for the very first time. Back around 1988 it was imported by a egg farmer who drove his trucks full with eggs to Italy and came back with a truck loaded with Italian classics. The 130 seem to have a special preference to mister Foppe as he had at least 5 of them in beautiful condition.This particular coupe was originally delivered with a beige interior in velour. But looking at it the fabric was completely white! Strange however was the fact fact that the fabric is the same as the factory cloth.. Anyway, I bought it and did a small technical restoration, tires, exhaust, wheels and it needed a new windscreen as a heavy lamp felt on it during the storage in the barn.

So in the same time I bought the other coupe’s from mr Hondius, a very nice dark blue one which was completely restored afterwards and finally came in the hands of my good friend Peter. His car and it’s restoration is described in another story on this page (50-YD-53)

unfortunately the world had to suffer from a bank crisis and I had to make decisions what to do to cut the costs in my company. Selling some of my collected cars was at least something I could do to keep things going and so it happened that a very nice gentleman from Germany called me on a Sunday morning asking about my two coupe’s. He came a bit later in the afternoon and was so enthusiastic he bought this coupe on the spot. I remember he was an architect and the car went into his summer house, a giant pyramid building which housed more classic car like a RO80 and a Cadillac which used to belong to the Sjah of Persia. Anyway, I knew from what he told me that this gentleman was also quite ill that time and from what I learned a while after our deal was that he passed. The car went to another owner also in Germany and very recently I saw it offered again on autoscout24. So let’s hope it will continue to be in good hands and the owner keeps in touch!