As most of you probably know, my son Edward has taken a year’s leave from TTAC, and is starting it with a two-week trip to the old country. He just sent me his first message, with a Curbside Caprice Classic, no less, on the streets of Amsterdam. The Dutch have always had a thing about big American cars; maybe because their roads tend to be straight and flat? Nice, but I’m holding out for a DAF.
An ugly American loose amongst the Dutch?
Referring to the car, Paul. 🙂
But seriously, the owner of this vehicle must either be rolling in money, using compressed gas or is that a rare diesel model?
Oh yes! The DAF!
What a wild thing. It had a CVT made of rubber bands.
DAF went bust developing a new small car in the ’70s — which ended up being a Volvo! (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volvo_300_series)
Here’s a very patriotic specimen I spotted in 2004 by the canal in my father’s hometown of Meppel. Never figured out what “Schieves-Moods” meant.
Oranje boven! Hup Holland!
There used to be quite a few of these in Norway in the 80’s, seemingly always in the same colour as the one in the picture, and a few actually had the diesel, although most were 305 or 307’s (a few 350’s seem to have managed to get here too, but many of those were Oldsmobiles . Most were/are owned by people who wouldn’t drive nothing but American cars anyway…but I kinda like them. Panthers are ultra-rare over here, so it’s ostly the only choice we had for a proper American car at all.
Ahh the old country. As a Canadian of Dutch descent it’s a great place to visit. Not sure if I’d want to live there for more than a year, population density isn’t really my thing.
Anyway, the home team in the Netherlands has so little to cheer about you can easily understand why they’d go for interesting American cars, or more likely go for football. I always wonder about the Nordic countries, at least they (had) SAAB and Volvo.
The Dutch do not really use their cars all that much. The reason they have this car can be seen with the trailer hitch. They are obviously serious vacationers. At least this should move their camper better than a clapped out desiel van the Dutch usually have.
“The Dutch are mad, their fingers stuck in dykes — they use the wrong side of the road and ride around on bikes!”
This Caprice is not a diesel but a 5033 cm³ petrol car. It was first registered 01-05-1990 in the Netherlands. You can find all details at this site: https://ovi.rdw.nl/VoertuigDetails.aspx. Just type in the yellow field and press ”zoeken”.
Most of the Caprice’ i know of in the Netherlands were used in the funeral business. Probably this one too.
I Consider that my “old Country” as well. I can’t help but wonder where that liscense plate was from as well. XX85 is an interesting start.
Maybe they got “Moved to” Amsterdam by a new job. Dam I’d love to try living there for a long time.
I loved the vibe of that place. Strolling through the city from place to place as the late afternoon sun lingered. Never had so much fun in my life.
The only Car Rides I can remember were very few cab rides, on Opel , a Mercedes… a friends DAF, maybe.
The Dutch registration of license plates is based on the moment of entry. XX-plated cars al date from early 1990. Around 1992 the new series started with something like DD-AA-01. A (Royal) B (Commercial) C (Diplomats) aren’t used for passenger cars.
My favorite dutch car to own would be a Daf 55 coupe or a Volvo 480 despite all it’s Renault short comings.
US cars are extremely rare here, but so are surviving DAFs; personally I’m holding out for a Volvo 360 CC, my favorite ‘Dutch’ car.
Yup, US cars here are often converted to run on LPG, decreasing the costs of day-to-day ownership (gas is more than $8 per gallon). However, buying one is still a pretty expensive endeavor with cars of which hundreds of thousands were built marked up for their relative rarity; a quick look shows 3rd gen f bodies going for about 5000 Euros. Cherokees are dirt cheap though, Chrysler had dealerships here for a while, coasting on the minivan boom. I’d say this style of Caprice is one of the more common models too as they were pretty popular for hearse duty, same for the later bubble ones.
“Curbside Caprice Classic”! Loving the play on words there!
More important than fuel price would be having off-street parking in Amsterdam I’d think
Paul, this photo of a second generation Cadillac Seville in Copenhagen just came across one of my Flickr RSS feeds today. Diesel?