During a restoration of a car the dashboard instruments were in miles. The factory had made some samples with kilometers for Europe but those were not for sale anywhere. At the request of the customer Bart Holland’s instrumentation department made a new instrument glass plate engraved in kilometers. The odometer however kept showing miles. Th...
25 years ago Mr. Jansen came to us for restoration of his Jaguar E-type. It was a large restoration during which nothing has been overlooked or forgotten. Now, after 25 years and 125,000 km, this Jaguar still looks perfect and drives marvellously. The employees who worked on this restoration 25 years ago still work at Bart Holland. ...
The electric cables in motor-cars from the beginning of the last century were braided with a cotton sheath. Just like in the houses of that time. (BMW 327, construction year 1938) The cotton dried and pulverized over time and this meant a short circuit and a fire hazard. Plastic was not invented until the 1930s, but it took a long time be...
Bart Holland once received an assignment to participate in the restoration of an aircraft. It was a 1953 de Havilland. This aircraft had to be given a completely new interior. The chairs were delivered to Bart Holland to be brought into new condition. The de Havilland had two pilot seats, four luxury seats, and two regular seats. The frame o...
For many years a customer was annoyed about the fact that the boot lid of his fully original Citroen DS Cabrio fitted badly. The polyester from which it was made didn't retain its form and whatever was done or reinforced, the boot lid still fitted badly. In the workshop of Bart Holland a completely new boot lid was made out of al...
Like many cars of the Sixties, the plastic dashboard of a Fiat 2300 S Coupé was cast in a mould. It was a fast and simple production method. Unfortunately after many years the plastic began to collapse and break from the inside. A new dashboard was not available. At the workshops of Bart Holland, after thorough study in the Library, t...
In the Fifties there was a growing need for detailed automotive study material. Alongside the many study and technical books that were published there was a need to improve the learning of how a car works in practice by means of visual aids. At first textbooks consisted of ingenious foldout drawings. Later beautiful scale-models with cutaways ...
For the past 35 years several automobiles from various years and models have been brought to as-new condition - looking like they have just left the factory - at Restoration Company Bart Holland. It is interesting to see which developments occurred during their original fabrication process. One of the pioneering developments in automobile produ...
Everyone knows the Ford Model T as the first car that was produced on an assembly line. From 1908 to 1927 more than fifteen million of these cars were sold. Everyone also remembers the statement by Henry Ford, in his autobiography of 1923 that, “Any customer can have a car painted any colour he wants, so long as it is black.” But few people...
Formerly car engines were cooled using plain water. Antifreeze or coolant as we use today did not exist. Frozen water expands and thus engines cracked if the water was not drained in time. Various methods have been developed with varying success to repair the cracks. In Australia an engineer had developed a technique to repair cracks in engine ...
