Ferrari Dealer and Collector
Swaters, who had bought a Ferrari 500 Formula 2 car in 1952 for his racing team, was contacted in 1953 by Ferrari to resolve a problem with the local customs authority for the car they were to display at the Brussels Motor Show and was asked to take care of the Ferrari exhibition stand as well. He managed to get the car through customs as well as making a sale at the Motor Show. As a result he was appointed as the official Ferrari importer for the Benelux the same year. This was the beginning of a relationship that was to last over 50 years and make Swaters one of the most important Ferrari dealers as well as a major collector of everything related to the brand.
In recognition of their long standing relationship, Ferrari unveiled the Ferrari 456 to the world at the Garage Francorchamps in 1992. At the same time the "Blue Swaters" was introduced by Ferrari as a colour to celebrate 40 years of partnership Ferrari-Swaters.
During his lifetime Jacques Swaters collected everything about Ferrari, original documentations, important vintage cars, sculptures, and other automobilia. With all these items he opened "the bunker" as he would call the Galleria Ferrari, an impressive collection in which feature a lot of gifts given personally by Enzo Ferrari, for example 1 of only 3 bronze crucifix crafted at Ferrari's foundery, on the occasion of the pope's visit to the Maranello factory, as well as a wooden sculpture of the Prancing Horse, that used to decorate Enzo Ferrari's personal office at Ferrari's Fiorano circuit. The collection also houses the only Ferrari four-door ever made, the "Pinin" prototype, the Ferrari GTO Evoluzione, a Ferrari California and other rare and important cars of the Italian brand.
Swaters last appearance in the sports car world was in an Ohio Courtroom where he was defending his possession of a very rare 1954 Ferrari 375 plus chassis 0384AM that was stolen from the U.S. collector Karl Kleve in the late 1980s. Swaters said that he rightfully bought the car as a burnt out chassis in 1990, and that he and Kleve settled its ownership in 1999.
In 2008 an aged Jacques Swaters decide to sell a large part of his impressive collection, at an auction in Maranello.
Read more about this topic: Jacques Swaters
Famous quotes containing the word collector:
“Though collecting quotations could be considered as merely an ironic mimetism—victimless collecting, as it were ... in a world that is well on its way to becoming one vast quarry, the collector becomes someone engaged in a pious work of salvage. The course of modern history having already sapped the traditions and shattered the living wholes in which precious objects once found their place, the collector may now in good conscience go about excavating the choicer, more emblematic fragments.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)