Vídeo: Colecções de Sonho da Ilha da Madeira: Uma paixão por estrelas

🗣️ Transcrição automática de voz para texto.

If you notice most people don’t have just car here in Madeira. They have 4, 5, 8, 10, 15, 20. You always have a huge choice of models. Then it becomes a passion. I spend entire Saturdays where I don’t leave the house except to go to dinner, at night, with friends and during the day I’m always here, entertained. Meanwhile, a friend comes by to have a coffee with me or to exchange some ideas. I just like to fix one car at a time. I fix it, put it completely ready and only then do I start with another one. Always like this. These cars, after being restored, go through a few days of road testing, to be 100% impeccable. First they descend down here, in Livramento, a flat road, which serves as a form to test the brakes, and then normally we always do a course to test the car, that is up the Poiso. Is a tradition, for those who live in Funchal, to always test the cars at Poiso. There’s the climb, the road is a beautiful road, it’s in the middle of the trees and it’s a good place to test the cars and to go for a ride. For example, rides on Sundays, family lunches on Sundays where one of the children drives one of the old cars and we go on a mini excursion with our cars, with our classic cars. My name is Marcelo Freitas, I’m 70 years old, I collect cars and a few other things. This began when I was 11 or 12 years old because I bought a Standard 8 with a friend and from that point that was the one who stayed. Meanwhile I went to Porto for the military service, when I came back, with twenty-somethings years I already had about 8 or 9 cars. I was buying and selling them to improve the collection but I always had cars, more or less, good. I had about four MGB, a Porsche 914, a Datsun 240z. A lot of variety and always improving. I had to opt for more comfortable cars that would allow me to drive. Most of them have been restored here. This one has never been restored, this is a 500 SL, it has 22 or 23 thousand kilometers and I bought it with 11 thousand in 1981. This one was restored last year, the Isetta was also worked on last year In fact, it has an interesting fact, those little grills that didn’t exist, I couldn’t get it anywhere, but I managed to find them in Argentina. Yes, and had put the grids for the exhibition but, unfortunately, we weren’t able to participate in the exhibition but is ready for next time. When I was around 40, 40 or 42, or something like that I bought an Isetta, I don’t know if it was this one or if it was another one, because I had two. The original color of this one, it’s the current one, but I didn’t like it and I painted it black. At that time, we didn’t as much attention to detail and quality so I painted the color I wanted and liked. So, I bought this car and in the meantime I bought one more and then I wanted buy a MGB to exchange for the two Isettas, the motorcycle and some more money and I kept the MGB Meanwhile, my other son, the oldest Pedro, about six years ago, bought an Isetta in Lisbon. And I said, "What if I found my Isetta again?" And what is my astonishment that I found her at house of Dr. João Cavaco, a doctor. At first, he was a little reticent to sell but the wife ended up saying that given the history that this has, we will sell it to you. When my father first bought it, the car was green, in the original color, and my father painted it black And when we bought it again, this second time, the car was red and white so we dismantled the whole car and rebuilt the car to the image that it is now. This car has a special value for the family because it was my father’s 40 years ago. There’s one thing, there are only six cars left from the first Rally da Madeira and this is one of them. There was a moment in the collection and these new restorations, it was what my father retired. My father always had a taste for cars and it has increased the collection. It’s an expensive hobby but at the same time it’s not because cars always pay off. It’s an asset and it guarantees that my father is doing something that he likes and that he enjoys and ends up being a family hobby. The Mini Hondas collection started with the two blue one, the most recent, from 1997. My father bought it at the time, when I was a kid, when I was 13, 14 years old meantime I, some time ago, found one that had also belonged to my father, 40 years ago, the one from the Isetta story that my father, at the time, exchanged together with Isetta because of the MGB and I found the bike, bought the bike to restore and gave it to my father as a birthday present. It was where it all started. We got the first one. When ordered parts to fix the first one, there were parts left over. Then we bought a second, a third, a fourth and a fifth. I already bought four at once. I once bought four of them from a scrap yard. When it arrived here on a pallet, all crooked and warped, I said, "What am I going to do with this?" I spent a few days looking at them then I started to fix them, quite scared. The house was big and when were connected to the car industry, the first car I had, more or less, was a Beetle that my father bought. He had received it from a refund, he brought it home and it was one of the first cars I started to drive in around the age of nine or ten. We’ve always had cars and motorcycles, me and my older brother, my sister not so much, we were always here, we were in the garage a lot and around it and the passion started here. I had my motorcycle license first, I continued to riding a motorcycle, then when I had my car license was when I started to use the cars that we already had more, the old cars and the new cars and I also started looking to buy cars. We started to increase our collection of cars and the first car that I bought was an Austin Mini Cooper S. I had the car for about 13 years and in the meantime I sold it because I didn’t use it much. I also had Rally cars. This part of the cars always increases, the cars and the motorcycles. The car we like the most is always the last to arrive at the garage, is always what bring us more joy. Although my father says he doesn’t want to buy any more cars or restore them, I’ve heard this conversation so many times I can’t believe it’s true. Let’s see. These Mercedes, one of 1984 and one of 1985, were bought by two sisters who imported the cars from Germany. The cars came here to Funchal but at the time they were not legalized. However, we were aware that these cars existed and as my father always liked Mercedes we went looking for them. However, I discovered the two cars in São Vicente, the cars were really what they had told us, they had few kilometers, they were completely original and we ended up buying the cars. At the moment they are two cars that we have here in our mini collection of cars that have a flair. They have different colors, one is petrol blue the other is red and the cars are impeccable. And let’s see what we’re going to do with them, if they’ll remain in the collection, if someday we will get rid of them. But they are two interesting cars, that must be quite rare in the state they are in. One has around 2,800 and the other around 3,200 km, they have the original tires, the original original brakes. In our hands the only thing that we did was wash them, wax them and treat the upholstery to keep them in the state they are in. I have that 350 over there, once there was a mishap with it that you can’t even imagine! I was crossing the Gibraltar airport, that is an airport and a road at the same time, and it was very hot and my wife said, "You better close the hood or you’re not going to get a sunburn". And when I go to close the top, it doesn’t close all the way, and stays a little open. I was going to Marbella, I went to a supermarket and bought one of those adhesive tapes. The catalogs are the size of a mountain, I called a mechanic here and the mechanic said I had to have a hex key. To unlock the hood motor. I couldn’t find it, so I put some tape on it. And the car continued to drive. It ended up being fixed here. I really like driving the Pagodes, in good truth, but this 500 gives me a lot of pleasure because it runs well. It’s a car that has a cool engine, a V8 engine, interesting, full, big and very good to drive.