Fifty years ago: the start of a serious discussion on collecting, restoring and driving old cars

At the third Interclassics in Brussels, last November, I bought the catalogue of a very special car auction which was held in February 1994 in France. It was, in fact, the dispersion of the famous collection of, mainly, French cars once collected and partly driven by Serge Pozzoli. The man who sold me the catalogue was an older British dealer in automotive literature and during the short conversation we had, it appeared that he didn’t know who Pozzoli had been.

This struck me indeed. For me, Pozzoli is a name almost identical to collecting and caressing old, mainly prewar, French cars of the less known makes. For decades, Serge Pozzoli (1915-1992) was thé man who seemed to know everything about these cars and he wrote it all down in his own magazine, the ‘Fanatique de l’automobile’. He was also one of the most important collectors of classic cars, was involved with museums and with historic racing.

He was also active in uniting people who had the same love of old cars. So it comes as no surprise that in 1967 he was one of the founding fathers of what is called the FFVE, the French Federation of Historical Vehicles. Today about 1200 clubs are a member of the Federation and it is estimated that these clubs represent more than 230 thousand car owners and enthusiasts! Last October, all these people have been asked by the FFVE to fill in a survey from which it must become clear what kind of cars they collect and drive, how they use their cars, etc.

In the same year the FFVE was founded, 1967, also another important event took place. And it was organized more or less for the same purpose as the FFVE survey: what ideas have people on collecting old cars. Naturally, I would say, Serge Pozzoli was one of the participants of this First European Congress of Great Collectors of Historical Cars, held in October in Florence, Italy.

I had never heard of this conference until I discovered and bought the proceedings of it last year. It appeared that the Italians had quite accurately written down what had been said during the main sessions. There were about forty participants - from Italy, Spain, France, Belgium, Switzerland, Czechoslovakia, England and Denmark - and the ‘lingua franca’ during the meeting seems to have been French.

In a couple of contributions to this Magazine, I would like to inform you about some of the issues that were discussed in Florence fifty years ago and I hope that some of you will react and give your opinion on these issues. I am very curious to know whether the points of view have changed (much) since 1967. And whether there are still clear differences between the English and the Continental attitudes.

The first issue I would like to address concerns the modification of old cars. On October 9, 1967 Mr. Philip Mann explained to the audience which alterations to cars were accepted by the Vintage Sports Car Club. One of these rules was that the owner of a car could change its wheelbase. From the proceedings, one can infer that a kind of shock must have gone through several of the attendants. One of these was Serge Pozzoli and I will try to translate part of his reaction during the discussion of Mr. Mann’s talk: “I know that [the English] are proficient but there are certain things that pass the limits. Changing the wheelbase of a car, what is that? If a car maker has provided two different wheelbases for a model, one for tourism and one for sports, and when a tourism car is modified into a sports car and at the very moment that one gives it the sports wheelbase, I understand but giving the car just any wheelbase, that seems to me absolutely énorme. And if you can also change the brake drums, by putting on bigger ones, what remains of the original car?”

Do you think the English are still more ‘tolerant’ with regard to modifications? What do you think of M. Pozzoli’s point of view?

Words and photographs by Fons Alkemade.