OUR MEETING WITH TOM TJAARDA

14/03/04 

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At our annual member’s assemly for the year 2004 we had the presence of a very particular guest: we have met the responsible of the success of our beloved car, the person who has created it: the famous designer Tom Tjaarda!

We were 50 members in Campogalliano (a small town near Modena) to make the programme of the events of our Registro for the new season.

We met us at the restaurant “ All’Isola” where we spoke about a very hard problem: we spoke about the future of our old cars because it is menaced by the law Magnalbò – Salvi that from 2005 could give restrictions about the use of our beloved spiders.

Our club is very sensible with this problem and, in collaboration with other clubs of old cars and famous people in the world of cars, it has written many letters to the senator with the pray to review this law.

The second topic we spoke about was the organization of the meetings for the year 2004: the first with destination Langhe and Monferrato and the second with destination the coastal region of Conero. Moreover the Registro will take part at the annual Padua’s fair in November.

The most beautiful moment of the day was the arrival of the designer Tom Tjaarda, the man who has created our wonderful car.

Mr Tjaarda is a very simple person, who has come purposely from Turin to take part at our meeting. He spoke to us about his past and present activities in a very humorous and simple way.

He said to us that our car was created from an input of Fiat, which was astonished by the design of Tjaarda for the Corvette “Rondine”, and wanted to realize a car with the same style.

The designer Tjaarda spoke also about the famous Giovan Battista Pininfarina, the person who has handed down to him the love for harmony and details. For Mr Tjaarda is the harmony of the lines the secret of the beauty of the 124 spider. Mr Tjaarda has reminded the difficulty to create a design in a life – size without the use of any computer, and nowadays he loves designing his projects without computers because of he thinks that the result is better.

By hearing Mr Tjaarda speaking, we discovered that he has designed many other famous cars like the popular Ford Fiesta, the exclusive Ferrari 365 spider California and the beautiful De Tomaso Pantera. 

Mr Tjaarda, although he is a person famous all over the world, is a very nice person, very polite and simple. He was moved by receiving a small gift from the hands of the president Alberto Brancolini nd he declared that today was the first time that he has taken part at the meeting of a club of owners of a car he has created.

He has also reminded that in 40 years of his career he worked with Pininfarina, Ghia, De Tomaso, and nowadays he has founded the Tjaarda Designs, which works in co-operation with famous car companies like Honda: the inside of the last model of Honda Civic have been designed by him.

The day we spent with this famous designer was interesting and wonderful and we thanks Mr Tjaarda for his presence in our meeting and to have created our wonderful 124 spider.  

pUP 

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