A TT party outside Assen? Of course. In Nieuw-Amsterdam, volunteers transform café De Viersprong into a Valhalla for the right-minded motorsport enthusiast.
“My wife sometimes says: what are you going to do with that old junk?” Martin Jeuring (56) from New Amsterdam, initiator of the TT Café, chuckles. By ‘junk’ his wife means the few old engines that are in his shed. “Oh man, I like that so much. I can stand there for an hour. A little cleaning, a little looking.”
The TT Café at De Viersprong is intended precisely for types like Jeuring, lovers of everything on two wheels that crackles and howls. In the catering facility, volunteers, men like Jeuring, will convert the café into one large exhibition space on Sunday afternoon. Gert Koers’ establishment is crammed full of beauty: special suits, photo albums and, of course, motorcycles. About fifty pieces, two-stroke and four-stroke engines, ranging from 50cc to 1000cc.
‘It screams so good’
Special is the display of the Seeley-BSA Goldstar and the Honda RS125-R. The first, one critter from 1963, is ridden by Sjabbo van Timmeren (65) from New Amsterdam. The Honda next to it belongs to his son, Orlando van Timmeren (48), a successful driver. “And my grandson, Orlando junior, also won the European junior championship on it not so long ago,” says Sjabbo van Timmeren proudly.
Everything revolves around the stories, says Jeuring. “As a 15-year-old boy, I was standing along the track in Assen when Jack Middelburg came flying by. Wonderful, that sound of the two-stroke. It whines so nicely. It does nothing up to six thousand rpm. After that it is a lion.”
‘Pete Exactly’
The famous motorcycle Jack Middelburg, winner of the TT in 1980, has also been in De Viersprong since Sunday. On Sunday morning, Jeuring personally traveled to Neede, a village in the Achterhoek, to pick up Middelburg’s Honda RS500. A fan read about the TT Café in New Amsterdam and selflessly made the machine available.
The engine gets a regal treatment. Leave that to Jeuring. “It’s not quite straight,” he says at one point. And while two men hold the racing monster, Jeuring straightens the steering wheel with an almost surgical caution.
Patrick Bos (28) from New Amsterdam shakes his head laughing: “Pietje Precisely.” Bos, as he says himself, is also infected by the motorsport virus. “My father was active in racing and yes, then you are infected by it.” On Thursday he and his friends will leave for a TT campsite in Assen for a four-day motorsport party. “But help here first. If I can help here to make something beautiful out of it, then you will, right?”
‘Drinking a beer, watching engines’
The official opening will follow on Monday afternoon by Wil Hartog and Marcel Ankoné, also of those big names in the racing world. The exhibition can be visited free of charge from Monday to Sunday between 2 and 9 p.m. for anyone who has motorsport running through their veins.
The aim is to marvel at all the technology on display. “And drink a nice beer with it,” says café owner Koers with a smile. “We build things so full that we almost have to ask guests to sit on the bikes.”