Perry van den Eerdwegh had only just left his car garage in Eindhoven on Tuesday when he received a call that smoke was coming from the roof. To his horror, there turned out to be a fire. One of his beloved American cars completely went up in flames.
“It’s misery,” sighs Perry as he walks through his dark, soot-covered garage with a flashlight. Due to the fire, the electricity no longer works. The firefighting foam is still up to his ankles. “This was a brand new Ford Thunderbird Super Coupe from the 1990s,” he points to a burned-out car. There is little left of the modern classic American car.
“We brought it in to work on it tomorrow,” he says about his favorite hobby project. “The car battery was dead, so I hung it on the charger. Then I went home to eat,” says Perry.
He had been home for less than an hour when he received a call: smoke was coming from the roof of the garage. “I slowed down. I also had the wrong keys with me. In the meantime, the fire brigade was already there. The garage was completely full of smoke, you couldn’t see anything anymore.”
“I think it’s terrible. The Thunderbird is a very special car.”
When the smoke cleared, it quickly became clear that the damage was enormous. Perry suspects that the fire started in the Thunderbird’s battery. “I think it’s terrible. The Thunderbird is a very special car. Now it can be scrapped. Look, all the cables have melted away. We can’t make this anymore.”
The car enthusiast has had the garage in Eindhoven since 1984. He put a lot of love and time into his Thunderbird, which was worth about 20,000 dollars. “That’s quite something, isn’t it?” Perry says dejectedly. “This was really my car. American cars are different from European ones. Especially the engine, you can’t imitate that sound with any other car. It does something to you.”
