Pssst! Sexy French and Italian PostCARDs

By Pete Vack
All photos courtesy Erik Verhaest

A little more than five years ago I put away my copy of Erik Verhaest’s amazing booklet of post cards with an Italian car theme. It’s a small booklet, and went unnoticed in a large stack of books stored in a corner until the inevitable clean up revealed it once more. And again I was amazed and delighted with the postcards, most of which were in color and from the 1960s. And so I went to the huge archives of VeloceToday.com and retrieved the below article, updated it, and made contact again with the delightful Mr. Verhaest.

After a few days of enjoyable email discussion about his postcard collection and helping to identify some cars in the gorgeous locations, Erik Verhaest, aka “M.carpedi”, reflected a bit on the fun we had guessing the cars. “What a wonderful hobby!” he said. We couldn’t have agreed more.

Eternally enthusiastic, warm and friendly, Erik’s love of life and automobile was readily apparent in his emails, answers and help. While it was a great deal of fun to spot and identify the cars, Erik also enjoys the cards because of the location, scenery, and surrounding environment. His collection takes us on a journey to the most beautiful spots on earth. “In those days,” said Erik, “photographers did not consider cars to be a disruptive element, but pleasant additions to the panorama.”

It also occurred to the Editor that the scenes – most un-posed and totally natural – reflected not only a wide variety of great cars and superb locations, but a Europe at the peak of the post war economic miracle. Yes most of the locations are travel spots and therefore atypical, but the buildings are restored or new, the streets are clean, the clothes are fashionable, the people prosperous and the cars numerous and relatively affordable. The automobile had finally come to the European masses.

Erik says that “…the main purpose of my website is not to sell cards, but to share my pleasure of discovering all these hidden beauties with others. The the real ‘trouvailles’ (finds) will not be for sale as they are too rare.” He is more content just to share his passion with other car and card enthusiasts.

Today Erik puts a car a day onto his Facebook site, and will not run out of postcards to paste for the next 84 years. https://www.facebook.com/erik.verhaest He also has a homepage where selected cards are organized by make of car…very handy.

Erik and his collection are well known; he has been featured in Classic and Sportscar, Autovisie, La Vie De L’Auto and more. His collection is immense. “I started collecting postcards in the early eighties, when I bought my first Citroën DS. Not only is that car highly desirable, every sales brochure, photograph or scale model I discovered became part of the collection. Even the smallest DS parked on a postcard behind a church somewhere in France made me happy,” wrote Erik.

One of Erik’s old photos has a very young boy holding a wooden Volvo 444. Despite his love of Citroën and postcards with Citroën, Erik enjoys all makes and models. His postcard collection has thousands of cars picturing cars such as VW, Lancia Fulvia, Fiat Topolino, Morgan Plus 8, Ferrari, etc. “In fact,’ he commented, “I must have YOUR car on a postcard somewhere!”

Luckily, Erik’s career at Citroën of Holland made it easy to collect cards in his travels. He started working in the Citroën Dutch headquarters showroom in Amsterdam in 1978, where he was a salesman, a marketer, a sales instructor and the last 20 years of his career earned a living as the Communications Director. “With Citroën, I travelled through China from Hong Kong to Beiing with journalists in 1988; I saw Russia behind the wheel of a Traction Avant in the Paris-Moscow-Paris rally; I followed Jacky Ickx in Egypt during the Pharaoh Rally and Sébastien Loeb in the German WRC rally. I met designers, marketeers, engineers and factory workers, all involved with one thing; cars.

“One day in 1991 I showed some car cards to a motor journalist. ‘What a treasure,’ he said. ‘Would you like to publish some in my magazine?’ So I did, but there was one little problem: I could not publish under my own name. Imagine the boss at Citroën learning that a staff member played with postcards! I had to find a pseudonym. As my philosophy is ‘Carpe Diem’ (seize the moment) mcarpedi was born; Max Carpedi, sounds Italian or French, and his cards became PostCARds.”

Erik told Mick Walsh at Classic and Sports Car that his collection is meticulously filed, but that he also has a photographic memory. “I never forget a picture. Since I have over 2000 DS cards alone, that kind of memory can come in handy.” Swapmeets in Holland, France and Italy provide the main source for finding postcards, but shops on the French Riveria, Nice and Cannes and of course Paris are other good sources. “Black and white cards are fine but I prefer sunny shots with rich color.”

Erik started his collection more than 25 years ago. Time flies when collecting postcards. He has retired from Citroën, moved to France, built a house with four garages, and enjoys his 1988 Citroën 2CV6 with only 46.000 km. “And of course ‘our’ 1961 Citroën DS 19 Convertible which was discovered in 1995 in Boston, Massachusetts, with only 83.000 miles. It was restored completely, and since we have driven more than 300,000 miles with it, mainly on French B roads. Life is too short to leave cars in a garage, as M.carpedi would say…”

We asked him about how to purchase his postCARD books and postCARDs. He’ll send us an update in the near future.In the meantime enjoy the cards below and be sure visit his website and Facebook page.

https://www.facebook.com/erik.verhaest

m.carpedi.com