Piet Porrel

They used to call me Piet Porrel, and I still am one, a tinkerer. From an early age I went along the scrap pile to drag off old Solexes and bicycles before the dustcart arrived. I would fix them up and sell them on. That is how a lively trade in mopeds and later in cars came about. At a friend's place, whose father had been a coal merchant, I could park old cars between the coal bins. When the building was sold, Piet, 17 years old, drove up to his father's yard with five cars. His father was not amused; most of them ended up at the scrapyard. But why Packard and Studebaker? I collected car cards that my father got with packs of cigarettes, and you could fill a whole album with them. The 1937 Packard was the most beautiful of all, and I would copy it in drawings. For Studebaker, there was also a moment that stuck in my mind. We lived next to the Hotel 't Bruine Paard in Sassenheim. The car park was always full of Beetles, Citroen 2CVs, Opels, Simcas and the like. In spring American soldiers stationed in Germany would come to the bulb fields and the coast for the weekend. One American asked me where he could fill up. As a seven-year-old I could not explain it, so I rode along with him in his Studebaker to the petrol station. That was quite an experience. I even got a dollar; I felt like a king. Events like that stay with you without you realising it, and today I am the proud owner of 9 Studebakers and 4 Packards.