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Felix Spirlet’s Ford Dealership – Belgium – June 2018 | European and International Sites | 28DaysLater.co.uk

Felix Spirlet’s Ford Dealership – Belgium – June 2018

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mockney reject

Moderator
Staff member
Moderator



The History


Well I can’t find bugger all out about this place, I’m guessing by the various paper work strewn about the place it was active until the 80’s and had been around since the early 50’s. It also seems to have some weird kind of medical centre attached to the front with a few hospital type beds and piles and piles of medical records.

But as we all like a good jackanory I thought I’d make some history up.

Felix Spirlet (roughly translated to Arthur Daley) ran a local for dealership in a small town in southern Belgium. Whilst running his busy car sale and repair garage he also performed surgery on many of the villagers and helped no only keep their cars on the road but keep them in tip top shape.

Some might say he had the monopoly on keeping things going in the village

However in the 80’s Ford changed the drive train in their cars from Felix’s much loved rear wheel drive configuration to the new modern compact front wheel drive system. This upset Felix very much and he fled the village never to be seen again.

Some say he travels across Europe in search of old skool fords in need of his attention

Others say he simply had enough and took his own life and in a story worthy of a clickbait title and huge red arrows continues to haunt the village and terrorise the people who visit his old garage

Buy I say he fled to England and lives a new life as a man we now know as The Stig….



The Explore

I’d been pointed in the direction of this by another explorer who had visited it earlier in the year and knew it would be my kind of thing. They weren’t wrong!!

Oh my

If you ignore the cars for a second the building itself is ace, gloss tiled walls, wooden ceiling, old school offices, metal cabinets, etc etc etc

But then there’s the cars, I counted

3 MK1 Capri’s one being a rare GT model, a mk1 Escort, 2 mk1 Granada coupes, a mk1 Granada saloon, a 105e Anglia estate, a Zephyr estate and oddly a Fiat 850 spider, I could quite happily have taken any of these home, if only they wasn’t buried amongst car parts and trees.

As I’ve already said the front of the building appeared to have been used as some kind of medical centre and although interesting in its own right the garage easily over shadowed it.

Enjoy the pictures



The outside

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The offices

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The medical centre

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The cars

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Baggy trousers

28DL Full Member
28DL Full Member
That's an epic find that! Look at all those lovely cars going to waste. And a GT too?!
Well reported that man and good write up too!
 

makexouthill

28DL Full Member
28DL Full Member
As a massive car enthusiast I always get sad seeing places like this just left! So many potential projects :P Was the same with Exploring With Fighters' video of the scrappage scheme place, broke my wee heart! Awesome find though, wee bit jealous :P
 

mookster

grumpy sod
Regular User
Well I've never seen it called that before!

The building used to form part of a long closed coal mine complex before being taken over by the aforementioned Felix.
 

Airfix

28DL Full Member
28DL Full Member
Nice find, a pity that those cars could yield some spare interior parts for anyone doing a project.
 

mockney reject

Moderator
Staff member
Moderator
I wish I knew more. Its the only building left though, nothing else remains.

It's been on my to do list forever, hopefully gonna get over there this summer to see it finally.


I was hoping you may know more.

There is tonnes of paper work inside relating to it being a Ford dealership with the address of the location on it.
 
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