Nice Mustang! thanks. a 1965 model

Another one!


Last picture I forgot earlier


I saw a total of 4 different International Harvester Scouts, 2 FJ40 Land Cruisers, 3 first generation Ford Broncos (and sadly was not able to get a picture of one of those) and a couple Alfa Romeos and a BMW 8 series.

No pics of the Alfas?

Unfortunately no, I saw two different Alfa Romeo Spiders. It seems like every block has a few older unique vehicles. The Detomaso Pantera was especially memorable but it passed on a street too fast. I might have been charging my camera battery when I saw the first Alfa Romeo. The other while on the bus and couldn't get a picture quickly enough. I was very pleased to see so many Scouts, mostly one I also couldn't get a picture of which was orange.

I just read a short article in my local newspaper about the probably most expesivest car-crash of the last months. One guy couldn't handle his Mercedes Benz SLR McLaren and have totaled it. It's value was 500.000 €.

Hopefully -for the guy- he has a full insurance. Hopefully -for the business- not at my company.

Again few cars found by my father:

1963 Cadillac:



Dodge Neon with US plate, it has nothing special except that the picture was taken near Brussels and not in North-America



Note the added foglight despite the US plate...

Beautiful Caddy!! and the Dodge Neon does have "something special", it's a Doge instead of a Chrysler, which is what we're used to in here

By "nothing special" I mean a US Dodge with US plate. If I did not mention that the picture was taken here, could it have been guessed? (I gues so, from traffic lights & signals).

How did a Nevada car get there? They would have to drive 2500 miles across the country and then take it on a ship across the ocean. That's a lot of trouble for a Neon.

If the owner is a US military officer posted to NATO headquarters in Brussels, the Pentagon will pay the shipping costs.

Personally I think that's a waste of taxpayer's money. Why can't they just get a European car, and if they've got something special at home they either store it in a garage or pay to have it shipped over themselves?

Nevada is 80% owned by the US Gov't. We have Navy bases in the middle of the desert. A lot of people in the military take their vehicles with them when they go overseas.

Oh, and we have planes too. Planes big enough to fit several cars.

So these possibilities are some of the "bonbons" or "goodies", the government offers to their soldiers, when they go abroad. And the US government is not the only one.
Have you known, that it's usual, that soldiers, stationatred in foreign countries, are living always tax-free? Perhaps nowadays it's not that extreme any more, but I've heard it from former German soldiers, who had been in Budel/NL or in Belgium.


@G-Mann: the GI's have to think about two economic facts:
a) if they take their own car from home in the other country, they don't need to spend money for annother one (perhaps something, they don't know or don't want to have, or aren't able to drive), but they loose money, if they would sell it abroad. They can drive around with US-spec cars, but when this car will be sold, it has to be changed for the EU-laws (indicators, tinted windows, brake-lights etc) and finally the very most of the US-cars are unknown and unpopular over here.
b) they can buy cars in the other country, but then they have to learn, how to handle it. They can be cheap, too for them. So here the GI's are often buying old and big Mercedes and BMW in rough condition, which wouldn't pass the German TÜV or which are unattractive for local people (too high taxes, too high insurance, to many costs for maintenance).
When they go back to the USA, they have to think, if they have a use for them or can sell them again. Otherwise: they don't have to pay money for the shipping, so not rarely they take quith rotten cars back with them.

Btw.: the actual known three K 70 in the USA had made this career as former GI-cars. This way to change car between the countries and continents can cause nice chances for car-lovers - a good and cheap chance to get a real strange and unknown car.
So the father of my Japanese friend had in 1961, as his first own car, something hyperrare, a 1959 Ford Taunus [P2], one of two in Japan. This car was brought by a GI from Germany to Okinawa.



At least all this has annother nice results for license-plate-collectors: plates of foreign soldiers are always, in every country, quite rare and hard to get.

But wouldn't get it in this case, a special license-plate? Usually US-soldiers in Europe are getting extra plates for their private cars.
So I think, that this Neon belongs rather to an US-tourist.


@Gag: the British soldiers not, am I right? If I see the privae cars of soldiers of the British Rhine Army, they still have their British plates.


When the IRA-terrorism was increasing in the 70ies, one time they had changed the plates of the Army-school buses, from the black British Army-plates to regular German ones. But this was a helpless try, because everyone could see, that these Leyland-buses are pure British and never used in Germany. The LHD-steering wheeels hadn't helped either.

It's similar with the plates of the GI's private cars. For a long time they had US-sized plates, white with black letters and US-letter-combinations. Since ca.8 years it was changed to German style-plates. Not really helpful either, because at first they have their own combinations (HK-, IF-, AD-, AF-) and as second, you can identify the GI's very easy, when they use their US-cars or US-spec cars, cas, which were never regulary on our market.

Well thought, but failed.

I thought that perhaps the car had only recently arrived in Belgium, but if it's acquired a foglight it must have been there for a while, despite still having Nevada plates. I give up.

I've never heard of British soldiers getting their cars shipped overseas courtesy of the government. American soldiers probably get a lot of luxuries.

I think ingo was just asking about number plates on British soldiers' cars, not whether the government pays for shipping.

According to Wikipedia:

"From 1963 until around 1990, in West Germany, private vehicles owned by members of British Forces Germany and their families were issued registration numbers in a unique format (two or three letters followed by two or three digits plus a "B" suffix, eg. AQQ 89 B). This was discontinued for security reasons, as it made them vulnerable to Provisional IRA attacks. Private vehicles driven by British military personnel are now issued with either standard UK number plates (if right hand drive) or German ones (if left hand drive)."

old Mercedes :

Oh yes that tasteless air freshener fits very well to the nice car...

I think, you only wrote this to annoy us, eh?


No, the only cars, where air-fresheners are belonging originally, are dirty junk-wrecks, owned by poor and dirty people (smokers anyways), who let old pizza-boxes, dog-pillows and empty beer-cans rotting inside.