Some cars disappear from your mind as soon as you hand back the key. Others keep travelling with you for the rest of your life.

I still miss my 1974 DAF 46 Super Luxe. Not because it drove brilliantly. It honestly did not. It was slow, made its own distinctive noise and the Variomatic did exactly as it pleased. I miss it for its charm. For its story.

I bought it for five hundred guilders. Less than a week later I drove three classmates to Aeolus in Sexbierum for a school project. On the way home the engine ran worse and worse. I only just made it to Drogeham.

Foeke looked under the bonnet once. “The engine is dead.”

The next morning we were drinking coffee in the old caravan that served as a break room at his body shop. His employee Auke listened, took a sip and calmly said, “I know where there is another DAF like that.”

We drove to a small house in Kollumerzwaag. Beside it, in the shade, stood a DAF 46. An old man came outside, a genuine Wâldpyk. “Fifty guilders and you can take it,” he said. Auke looked at me. “Do you have a tow rope?”

Soon I was steering the DAF behind Auke's car with trembling hands. Braking was not exactly a DAF's strength when attached to a tow rope. When we finally reached the yard in Drogeham, Foeke looked at it and said, “We will do some spanner work tonight.”

At seven we started. Bonnets off. Front crossmember out. Both engines disconnected. An hour later the donor engine, with only 34,000 kilometres on it, was hanging in my own DAF.

“Turn the key.”

And there it was. It ran immediately.

Foeke listened, nodded and decided the donor bonnet was rather tidy too. We swapped that as well. But the project was far from finished.

In my spare time the real work began. I welded a few rotten spots in the floor. It went surprisingly well until I looked up one evening and wondered why the DAF was full of smoke.

The carpet was on fire. Not slightly. Gone.

Panic came first. Relief came second. There was still a donor DAF in the yard. Its original red carpet moved into my car and afterwards nobody could see that there had ever been a fire.

Then came endless sanding. Filling. Sanding again. More filler. And swearing a hundred times because nothing seemed perfectly straight.

One evening Foeke said, “We could simply spray it red, perhaps with clear coat. But I know something better.”

Ford had a beautiful red pearl finish on the Sierra. That was what it had to be.

When the DAF was finally allowed into the spray booth, I masked it as if my life depended on it. Foeke put on his white overalls, went inside and closed the door. I watched through the little window. All I could see was something reddish.

After almost an hour the door opened. Foeke came out wearing that self-satisfied grin I can still see.

“Well?” I asked.

“Yes. It is ready. It turned out beautifully.”

The next morning we carefully removed all the paper. The doors opened. Heit and Mem came round the back to look. Then the DAF went outside for the first time.

Sunlight touched the bonnet. Everyone fell silent.

Across the rounded wings the red slowly turned orange and then acquired a purple glow. The pearl paint was alive.

Heit walked around it, looked again and said, “Now that turned out beautifully.”

Only then did I see what Foeke had known the evening before. It was not just the paint. Not a dent or scratch remained. Everything I had sanded, filled and prepared suddenly came together.

I think Foeke was proud of himself. Secretly, perhaps, a little proud of me too.

Then something happened whose meaning I only truly understood years later. The DAF did not merely become my most beautiful car. It became the beginning of my life with Cynthia.

Exactly 34 years ago today I took her to the cinema. We saw Basic Instinct. Of all films.

Afterwards we stood beside the DAF. I leaned against the bonnet. And there I gave Cynthia our first kiss.

Seven years later we married. Today we have been married for 27 years.

Perhaps that is why I still miss the DAF. Not because it drove well. Not because it was especially valuable. But because it witnessed the beginning of a life more beautiful than I could have imagined then.

Some cars take you from A to B.

My DAF brought me to Cynthia.