My first drive when I got my licence was a family owned Seat Ibiza, which we shared amongst brothers and sisters. Soon I wanted to own my personal car, and not be dependent anymore on my brothers’ and sisters’ planning. My parents were very clear: you never buy a used car, since people sell their car ‘for a reason’. That made things a bit complicated, since I absolutely wanted a convertible, and convertibles were quite a lot more expensive than closed cars those days. I found a compromise, which made my parents happy and which fulfilled my dream of having a convertible: a brand new dark grey metallic Lada Samara Convertible!

Many people laughed. Already then, Lada was not the sexiest of brands. But I had my convertible, and my parents thought that spending my first hard earned money on a new Lada was a very wise thing to do.

I drove the car for a few years, and put quite some mileage on it. In a strange way, I enjoyed it. The roof was down every single day when there was no hard rain. Light rain didn’t bother me-that flew over the cabin, not in. Originally made for very cold Russian winters, the Lada had an incredible heater!

Anyway, let’s move on. I worked hard, saved some more money, and fell in love with the (then just released and somewhat sexier) Fiat Barchetta. My parents couldn’t appreciate my decision, but a few months later I got myself a young demonstrator car from a Fiat dealership. A red one. A true sportscar. Wow! I could not have been any happier! The car never let me down, I drove it for more than 5 years, over 150000kms, and thoroughly enjoyed it.

Having tasted the Italian style and ‘refinement’, I then moved on to a very well used but well serviced Maserati Ghibli. For a strange reason, I really adored the ‘normal’ looks of the Ghibli. You had to be a car enthusiast to understand that it was a special car-if not, you never even realized it was a Maserati. The car put smiles on my face, but turned out to be dangerous. Yes, that’s the best word for it. No driving aids, no mechanical help to control the powers it had. After a few scary experiences with it, driving at normal speeds but on wet roads, it had to go. I did not thrust it anymore.

The Maserati dealer, where I dropped it off to put it up for sale, was opposite the Porsche dealer. I crossed the street, walked around in the showroom, was taken care of very well by the dealer, and decided after a few hours to get myself a used silver Porsche Boxster. That’s where my love for the brand started.

Porsche turned out to be ‘the’ brand for me. Reliable, very well built, not very expensive in servicing, with a very good and customer-oriented dealer nearby.

This is where it becomes a bit boring for you, readers. Porsche it was, and Porsche it would be. From the Tiptronic Boxster, I moved on to a manual 996 convertible, and subsequently a manual 996 Turbo, a manual 997 Turbo, and now, since 2015, a PDK Agate Grey 991 Turbo.

Those have been (and the 991 is) my ‘daily’ drivers, always in combination with a more economical Volvo (earlier on a white C30, and today a dark blue XC90 T8) for family use, trips to the city and when I have to move bigger things.

For the ballooning activities, we have been using Land Rover Defenders (300Tdi and Td5) for almost 30 years now. The Defenders have always taken a very strange place in my heart. Although they are extremely basic, uncomfortable, noisy, thirsty and unreliable, I love them. For one simple reason: PERSONALITY. They just are what they are, they don’t try to be something different, they don’t try to please you in any way, they don’t care that many people say that they are from medieval times.

My love for cars with a personality, cars that don’t try to please as many people as possible, but that just do what they want to do, and that just are what they are, if you like it or not, has grown to strange levels over the years. For use over the weekends, I started looking for somewhat different cars to drive. The obvious choice, definitely then, since price levels were really cool, was a Porsche 964. First a coupe, then a Targa, a convertible, even a Speedster along the way, and today a midnight blue metallic 3.3 Turbo.

Rarer and rarer cars, of which not too many were built, became a challenge for me. Wiesmann had intrigued me for years, but where on earth do you find yourself a reliable, fully original and perfectly maintained Wiesmann? Lots of time, travelling and energy went into that. But I turned out to enjoy that so much! Yes, you end up wasting time with not-so-honest sellers that have not told you the full truth on the phone, and for which you have been travelling 1000 miles, but that was part of the challenge and part of the game, part of my newly developed hobby/passion: to find that perfect example of a very rare car, somewhere, somehow, whatever you have to do for it, and at a reasonable price. Our first Wiesmann (around 2010) brought us incredible times, with unforgettable road trips at the end of the ballooning season, to Italy, Spain and Portugal. What an experience and such great memories! That taught me what a special car can do for someone’s life.

My love for rare cars is a true ode to those designers, engineers and brands that have dared to just do their thing, that have not asked themselves which car they had to build to satisfy the biggest possible group of people. No, they have designed and built the car of their childhood dreams, however senseless, stupid, weird or unrealistic that dream and idea may have been. From an Ariel Atom, a Morgan 3Wheeler, a 1991 Porsche 3.3 Turbo, over a Fisker Karma, a Wiesmann MF4-S GT, a Morgan Aero 8 SuperSports, and an Aston Martin Cygnet, to some good old Defenders.