A visit to the Van de Velde wrecking yard (Belgium) - 5-12-2017

[gerryvz]

I was able to sneak away from London for the day on Friday, May 12 and was able to visit the van de Velde wrecking yard and see my friend Marc and his son, Rob for a few hours. I hadn't been there since 2015, so it was nice to be back and see what was new.

Marc didn't have any new 500Es in his inventory, and he also told me that he had sold/scrapped the one or two picked-over ones that he'd had in recent years. He also mentioned he'd sold his personal 500E for a good sum of money.

About 8-9 years ago, Marc built a couple of huge new buildings to house a good share of his wrecked cars and parts away from the weather. In the past two years, Marc bought an adjacent piece of property and built another new building on it, including a "showroom" area upstairs for his personal car collection. This new building too was chock full of cars.

While I was there, a flatbed tow truck drove up with a red Benz that was among the most wrecked/destroyed cars I'd ever seen on the back of it. Marc accepted it and drove his fork-lift over to retrieve it and put it in his yard, for future dismantling and assessment. You can see the photos of this as you see the red car being taken in.

It was a brief visit, but I hope you enjoy the photos I took in and around the yard, including inside the new building. I did a 360-degree panoramic video of the inside of the new building, too. One of the highlights was a wrecked, but literally brand-new, AMG GT model. I took a number of photos of it. You can see that there is barely a speck of dust on the engine of this car, but the rear end is very trashed.

Cheers,
Gerry

 

[gerryvz]

More photos from the wrecking yard .....

 

[gerryvz]

A couple of 360-degree views inside the ground-floor "showroom" area and the back "storage" area of the newest building that Marc has built.

http://www.500eboard.com/showroom.mov

http://www.500eboard.com/storage.mov

Cheers,
Gerry

 

[r44raven]

Directly as a result of learning about this wrecking yard through Gerry's posts on the 500eBoard, last summer three of us from the UK - with our E500Es, en route for a visit to MB Stuttgart - paid a visit.

Not forgetting the human tragedies that must lay behind some of the wrecks, we were totally gob-smacked. The place is amazing. We must have spent at least a couple of hours just wandering around viewing the massive number of cars there - and we could easily have spent longer. We picked up a few useful "spare" items, i.e. wiper heads - but when we asked after some E500E specific items, i.e. fender cladding, we were politely told that even if they did have any, the "owner" would be keeping them for himself (which we took no offence to)!.

Given what Gerry has said about the owner having sold his 500E, maybe we'll have more luck next time we visit!

I'm led to believe its the biggest MB breaker in Europe? Anyone passing should not give up the opportunity of a visit!

 

[gerryvz]

van de Velde is very likely the largest Mercedes-only breaker in Europe. The only one I can think of that is also quite large is Mercman in the UK, who relocated from Southampton to near Plymouth a few years back. Mercman's old location in Southampton, which I had visited, was perhaps modestly smaller than van de Velde.

Today though, with several new buildings and a dramatically larger inventory of both NOS and used parts, I believe van de Velde is much larger than Mercman.

There are FAR fewer "older" (pre-W210) cars coming into van de Velde now, and he's specializing most of his efforts on more modern cars. Not to say he isn't collecting older cars, and still maintaining and growing his hoard of parts for the "oldtimer" and "youngtimer" cars, but the market is just at the 15 year and newer mark. Just like it is here in the US with the wrecking yards. Seen a major decrease in the past 3-5 years in the numbers of W124, W126, W123, W201 cars, and seen a major increase in 210, 220, 163, 203, 202, etc. models.

Cheers,
Gerry

 

[jaymanek]

Interesting to see so many uk registered cars there!

Sent from my SM-G925F using Tapatalk

 

[gerryvz]

Interesting to see so many uk registered cars there!

Indeed, Marc gets a fair number of cars both from the UK and from the USA. I think he gets a fair number of the overall total of wrecked MB cars in Europe !! He gets a lot of French and Dutch cars, as well. Not so many I see from Germany or points east, however.