The Lincoln V12, from a boy's book

Once, a long time ago, there was a successful series of boy's books: The Bob Evers Series (from 1949). It was about HBS students who of course would be called 'students' these days.

The main characters were:

Arie Roos: son of a shipping company, red hair, light skin, freckles. Is very fat, eats a lot and often and has ingenious ideas and a very good ability to improvise.

Jan Prins: son of a (retired officer of the former Dutch-Indian army) economical, stubborn, able to count well, he has technical interest, but is a somewhat rigid thinker.

Bob Evers: Son of a steel producer, rather American, technical, resourceful. Has problems with the Dutch language.

The boys experienced adventures while traveling around the world

There were always crooks and night chases. The writer, Willem van der Hout, wrote the books continuously under the name Willy van der Steen. He was a bread writer, a real production animal and was paid by Coca Cola, Shell and Droste for surreptitious advertising. More than 50 titles were published. In total, more than 5.000.000 copies have been printed. You can now find them in bushes at annual fairs, fairs, thrift shops, the site 'book shops, marketplace, Speurders…. Anywhere actually. The books can be found digitally at Kobo

The cars in the Bob Evers pockets

Cars that appeared in the series were rare and special in their time, such as Buick, Lincoln, Packard, and foreign twoseaters.

A Lincoln V12 in Drempt

And that Lincoln with a V12 (side valve) appealed to me enormously in my early childhood. I had spoken with one of our advertisers about it. But I was pleasantly surprised that Albert Venema sent me a whats' app: "I have a Lincoln V12 here". Drempt is not far from Dieren. So I just put the screen on the parking brake.

In Drempt I stood eye in headlight with a beautiful Lincoln Zephyr. The Zephyr was the 'entry level' in the luxury Lincoln line of the generation that ran between 1936-1940. The Lincoln was invented by Edsel Ford and according to the source information / designed by Eugene Turenne Gregorie, a premature school-leaver with whom it went extremely well. According to experts, the experience that Gregorie brought from yacht building can be found in the lines of the Lincoln. The other option is that John Tjaarda would have been the brain behind the design. . The car was intended to fill the gap between the Ford V8 models and the exclusive Lincoln K line.

The V12 was unique

In its class where V8s and 8 inline blocks were leading, the 4,4 liter 110 hp 12 cylinder was unique. That 12 cylinder SV was derived from Ford's V8 SV. During its presentation, the Lincoln was an extremely modern car. The windshield was low and slanted, the mudguards were integrated into the car and serious thought had been given to the aerodynamics. In the first year of production, 15.000 were sold. And that accounted for about 80% of total Lincoln sales.

All in all I saw the Lincoln from the Bob Evers series yesterday

For people who want to know everything about their childhood heroes, John Beringen has written everything online about the writer, the characters and the development of the series.