Vídeo: Colecções de Sonho da Ilha da Madeira: Arte sobre rodas

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I am a person that likes the old ones more. Cars up to the 40s, still 50s, are the cars that actually tell me more, are cars that I feel have a soul and when they are original, let’s say, it moves me a lot and this Rolls-Royce I have is a car that is mostly original and whenever I drive it, I think about the stories that this car has lived through, what happened with this car, the trips that he did and that moves me immensely. My name is Ricardo Veloza, I’m 75 years old, I’m a trained sculptor. One of my great passions is vintage cars. The passion for cars, I always say, since always, deep down, like any boy or a very young boy. I had the Dinky Toys, the Corgi Toys and I had my collection like any kid, but it was always a passion. Then when I did my military service, at that time I already had a ca, a TR4, at the time it was an almost recent car. When I see a TR4, I think it’s funny, because for me it was a recent car, nowadays it’s already a classic car of collection, old for a lot of people, for younger people, but deep down it’s a passion I always had. What’s interesting is that my father was an art collector and never had any kind of interest in automobiles, there is even an interesting story that I have. A friend of my father, Mr. Rui Dias who lived in England and came to Madeira and brought a 300 SL, a "Guldwing". I was a young boy, I had just finished my military service and I had a Volkswagen and one day I hear Mr. Rui Dias say, "Is your father all right?" and one day he met my father and said, "Buy the car for boy because he’s always walking around the car, looking at the car." And my father said, "God forbid giving him that crap.", which was a 300 SL "Gullwing". That car was later sold for the mainland and then left for London again so realize the stories that happen, a 300 SL "Gullwing" that was going to be sold to me for 60 contos, at the time. I never bought a car just to buy it, at least in the last few years, I made my life for years the time was different, the gasoline didn’t have the cost it has today, I made the my life in a Rover, for example. Then I had a Triumph Stag V8 that did my normal life with. I used to teach and went with a V8 which is something, nowadays, unthinkable. I also had a very interesting MG, a 1300 with a Speedwell engine modification. I had several very good cars but the ones I I have here I never bought a car just to buy it, for example the J12 I always dreamed of having a TC for example or a TA. One day a friend of mine said, "Buy the J2 which is less vulgar." and I bought the J2. So, it was a car that in a way I always had in my head and the cars I have today were cars I always wished I had. The Jaguar E-Type is a car that I think all of us, everyone dreams of owning a Jaguar E-Type one day. The 120 it is also an eternal car that people like and I always dreamed of having these cars, so, I’ve never bought the cars in a random way. Maybe the only case where it happened was with the Amilcar, which was a car I bought at Rali Pedras d’el Rei from a French gentleman, a friend. I was always chasing Bugatti, because my dream car is the Bugatti, and he said, "I’ll get you a car for Madeira better than this one.", of course there is nothing better than a Bugatti and sold me the car. Some time passed and I am here in Madeira and the Amilcar appears. It was perhaps the only car that came knocking on my door by chance, besides all the cars that I have there is always a certain criterion in the acquisition of the cars. I like this car a lot because it’s a small car, it’s very fast, it’s a car of a brutal resistance, I have this car for years, I even made four Pedras d’el Rei with him, but always running and well. I did car races here in Madeira with him, I still use it today, I often go on weekends to the to the hills of Madeira with the car without any problem and it is a car, that mechanically has a very evolved engine, much more evolved than the T6 and the TA’s. Anyone who knows a little bit of mechanics understands, this car has an engine fantastic, very well conceived and in addition, which is perhaps the least interesting thing, esthetically I think it’s an almost perfect car. It is very well designed all of it, very well balanced in terms of design is what I like about this car. The Rolls-Royce, was a dream I always had was to have a Rolls-Royce it is evident that I wanted a Rolls-Royce that had a capable dimension, on the scale of Madeira, because we have our own scale. It is evident that a Phantom is a dream car, on one hand the prices are impractical and they are enormous and when this car appeared, it belonged to a friend of mine from the mainland and one day talking to him he said he was interested in selling the car. I had a car that didn’t interest me that much, that was an XK150, beautiful car, very good but had a problem. It had the steering wheel, which for me was a problem for many people it is not, I had the steering wheel on the right side. One day I wanted to get rid of the car and the price they proposed was ridiculous, just because it had the steering wheel on the right side, so I got in touch with him, we reached a compromise and I traded it. I brought it to Lisbon, the car didn’t work and to reach Lisbon it was complicated and how I am used to cars here in Madeira. It’s a reality, we must have the mechanically very good cars and I started to force it, when I got to the entrance of Lisbon the engine broke. In fact, I didn’t break the engine, I broke two pistons, they completely fell apart. I called ACP and asked for a tow truck, the car came to Madeira and with the club, Rolls en Nantes I got the material for the car. The Jaguar E-Type I think that everyone, more or less, and I see that even young people or with more years, everyone dreams of owning a Jaguar E-Type I got this car in London in a very bad condition, my son picked it up in London with a friend, he came from London working and the car, when he arrived here, was completely broken. It must have been a car that competed it was all dented, full of tin and spent five years to restoring it and the car ended up in a fantastic condition, very well, maybe one of the best restored cars I own. The 120 is a piece with history, there is a certain romanticism around the car, it was owned by a lot of movie stars. In terms of races, it was a winner and I’ve had the car for a long time. many years, I even made the London-Lisbon with factory specifications. Nowadays they put disc brakes and other alterations and this car has factory specifications. When I arrived in Bilbao, the inspections were conducted and there were Jaguars like these with engines of the E-Type, with disc brakes and when I arrived at the inspection the British staff asked, "Are you going to participate with this?" and I said, "I will, why?" and I took the test. For now, I did Lisbon-Bilbao in 12 hours with my son and then I did Bilbao-Lisbon without any problem. I made two Pedras d’el Rei with him and never had any problems. It’s a dream car too. It was a dream I always had since I was very young, it was to build a car. It is evident that when I dreamed it was nothing like that, it was something more contemporary. One thing I always say to people is, "When they look at the car take in account that it was made by an amateur", I am a sculptor and I made, it in a certain way, with the silver of the house. If I had the possibility to have a workshop very well equipped, and also because I have some knowledge about car design, I would have made something much more contemporary, much more 21st century, something very well designed, with great aerodynamics. I have a small workshop with very rudimental material that I use to make my own works and I made a car, with my own drawing, but also thinking about the tools that I have that as I said are tools relatively rudimentary and then I made the car based a lot on the British Special. The bodywork is a Vaiman system, a wooden structure with a fabric that I think is extraordinary, light, climatized, it is very resistant because it does not break. I made it closed because there were problems afterwards. I thought that with an open is less structure, I made a closed Riley, which I happen to think turned out very well and it was the realization of a dream. This dream also resulted from a friend of mine who had a Riley RM, which had been sent to the scrap yard, in a perfectly miserable state, and which he offered to me. I went there to get the car, I took off the bodywork, the bodywork was completely ruined. I kept the chassis, wheels, the mechanical part that was completely broken, the engine, the gearbox, the differential, the grille, and the dashboard, I still managed to get the dashboard and started to draw. It was here, in this garage, that I made the car. There was a mistake at the beginning that the chassis was from the RM that it was a saloon and it was too big and there was no way to make a capable thing so, I got in touch with some English friends linked to car mechanics, mechanics and mechanical engineers and they said cut here, cut there and I removed from the car about 1.20 m of length and around 700 kg. The car has a relatively small engine, it is a Riley’s engine four-cylinder, 1500cc and it rides really well because it has become very light. It’s done and it was a dream come true. The people from Madeira have always had a great passion for automobiles. At the beginning of the 20th century we had fantastic cars here, very good, from excellent brands. We had a taxi rank, a fleet of American taxis but fabulous cars, fabulous brands. This even happened, the boats arrived at the port, went to the taxi to have a ride around the island and when they arrived, the customer himself bought the taxi, put it on the boat and took it. It was brutal "bloodshed". In addition, the old scrap dealers did a lot of damage, they ruined cars and motorcycles, spectacular motorcycles. I know so much about the story of Madeira, even for the profession I have, if you ask me why the people from here have this passion, I don’t know… There is something that lives in the soul of the people here, we see the rallies, the tour around the island and the amount of people is impressive, it’s a true party It’s a passion that really lives in us. We have fabulous stories with ups and downs, sometimes the uphill is a little strong but that gives us great pleasure and Madeira really is a very beautiful island. We, in a simple one hour car ride, see fabulous landscapes. I always say who owns a car, I’m not talking about the classics that’s something else, an old car use the back roads don’t go on the highways. For example, I live in Funchal ten minutes from downtown where I live, got fabulous roads to ride now there’s one thing we have here, that on the mainland is different. We have an extremely complicated orography and the cars here for them to be able to have their full performance, they must be mechanically perfect, we can’t play around. A car that comes here from England usually arrives here with small heating problems, several problems so mechanically the car it must be exceptionally good and use the secondary roads. I always say that nowadays there are no cars with defects, they are perfect. A car, even cheap, the most common ones, the most popular, always beautiful mechanic components, there are no defects. This didn’t happen years ago, the cars, even some of them it was the engineers who conceived them themselves, there was no image of the designer. The designer did not exist. When I started teaching at the university at the level of arts, at that time, there was no designer. It was talked about, one got confused with drawing, which is not the same thing, as we know. At this time, the designers appeared, now the designers are hooked to the computer and the cars come just like that. Then the globalization had a problem, which was also complicated. The globalization has made many automobiles, apart from the big brands, very similar. An example of this is the SUVs, they are very fashionable. There’s SUV, that if I change the badge of the car works perfectly. This didn’t happen in the 70’s. I still remember being on the highway, looking in the rearview mirror and seeing in the distance an Anglia, a Mini or any other brand. Today we already confuse them a bit and of course I’m talking about the brands more normal. When I see the big brands can be seen from a distance, even so Lamborghini level cars and those more modern ones there is already a certain confusion at the level of lines and I sometimes wonder, the designers have an obligation to be more creative in terms of car design because that’s their job. They have to create functional, the automobile, but at the same time something special. At this moment we fell into a type of vulgar drawing, that it happens in all kinds of drawings. Nowadays fashion, everybody wears jeans, everybody wears sneakers. There is an uniformization in terms of design, which did not happen years ago. I always say that I’m a hoarder. I really like having things, it gives me pleasure, but I’m not a collector, God forbid! I’m a person who likes cars and that has been buying over time and use the cars very often. I drive the cars and I don’t feel defeated because I am 75 years old and if I were to put the cars in the garage to polish, nowadays I would still be 75 years old and the cars would still be new in the garage. I don’t have any complains.