Burcea is from Giurgiu, he was president of the city’s Retromobil Club, but now lives in Bucharest. He worked at the Registration Service, where he was the head of the Registration Number Workshop. In fact, he is the one who built the first license plate workshop in the city.
“I am passionate about cars from a young age. I have eight cars from 1938, from the ’50s, ’60s, ’70s, ’80s, one car each from all eras up to ’93, the last certified historic car. I also have a Ford Mustang Cabrio , from 1965, which I gave, almost ten years ago, 30 thousand euros. But the most dear to me is a Plymouth car from 1938, a car like you saw in Sergiu Nicolaescu’s films searched for it for 20 years and found this model at a collector in Holland. It is part of a thematic collection ‘From the car of the Moldovan commissioner to Dacia Logan’, with cars from 1938 to 2004,” he told Agerpres. Viorel Burcea.
One of his cars appeared in Moromeții
“With Plymouth I played in ‘Morometii 3’ (in preparation – no) and I am the driver, it was a taxi in the film, with which the main hero, Nicolae, comes with his girlfriend to Doftana. And also in this film the IMS appears , the car with which Nicolae comes to meet his father”, he says. The images were filmed in Talpa, Teleorman county, but also in Ulmi, Giurgiu county. He also played in “Morometii 2” with the IMS, and in other films, also a driver. His cars also appear in TV series.
He considers himself more of a car enthusiast than a collector.
“We work with the soul. Not all of them are so expensive, there are cars that cost a thousand euros, but for me the value is not in the purchase price, the value is in its story. I have a car that cost five hundred euro and which for me is closer to my soul than the Ford Mustang, because it is part of my story and that of my family, it is like a family member”, he confessed.
Viorel Burcea’s favorite cars are the ones that have a story
“Well, this car, Dacia, may not be the most important, but it’s the car that accompanied me throughout my life, at all times. It was a family member,” added Viorel Burcea.
Although in his collection of cars he has sonorous names like Ford, Plymouth, he says that, day by day, he drives “a banal Opel that costs a thousand euros”.
In addition to the car collection, he also has four motorcycles.
“I also have motorcycles, the Carpathian motorbike, the first type that appeared in Romania, the Mobra, the Mini Mobra, I have four. But I also want a motorcycle from a collector from Giurgiu, a model manufactured in 1972 and which was part of the Giurgiu Militia. I want for this to be included in my story, but I still haven’t convinced the owner”, says the one who loves vintage cars and motorcycles.
Viorel Burcea was in love with motorcycles since childhood and when he was very young he managed to purchase one with which he dreamed of participating in races and which he did not know at the time belonged to King Mihai.
“At the age of 22, I managed to purchase King Mihai’s motorcycle, but without knowing that it belonged to him. It happened in ’82-’83, I was extremely young, it was just before I left for the army. I found the motorcycle at a mechanic at Orăşelul Copilului in Olteniţei. I thought it was special, I had never seen anything like it before and I exchanged it – I gave the man a Jawa motorcycle that I had fixed on a motorcycle that wasn’t working”, he recalls.
At that time, the movie “The Runner’s Silver Dream”, a movie about a guy who builds a motorcycle and beats everyone in competitions, was playing in cinemas.
“And in my mind, as a kid at that time, that’s what I wanted to do too, so I was modernizing the motorcycle and removing the old parts, when an old man of about 70 came to me, who was a vulcanizer at the auto workshop where I worked when I was military, and said to me: “Dad, what are you doing here? This is His Majesty’s motorcycle!”, but he explained that there were two motorcycles in Romania like this: one that belonged to an aviator (…), a motorcycle that the old man had purchased, and one that belonged to King Mihai, which I had: a BMW 500 Super Sport, manufactured in 1941,” he adds he.
The information that there were only two motorcycles of this type in Romania was later confirmed by other experts in the history of motorcycling.
“At that time, after so many years of communism, I didn’t quite understand what motorcycle I had, I wanted a motorcycle like the one in the movie, so I modernized it, after which I sold it and found out that the next owner throw it away”, Viorel Burcea also declared.
Meeting with King Mihai
Many years after that, when he had modified the motorcycle, he had the opportunity to meet His Majesty and share the story of the motorcycle with him.
“Later, around 2006, I organized an event, I was already at Retromobil, to which I also invited King Mihai, at the Aviation Museum. I have pictures of His Majesty congratulating me and I even received a diploma from him. At the event I went for a ride with him on the IMS, I told him about the motorcycle and I confessed to him the sins of my youth, that I was not able to keep that piece”, says Viorel Burcea.
The Giurgiuvian car enthusiast loves the history of places, not necessarily the engines that tell a story. That’s how he ended up with the house in Mihai Bravu, Giurgiu county, with that window like Moromete’s, a small place from 1938, which he wants to restore.
It also has: a collection of radar devices that worked in Romania; one of the driving licenses issued on the territory of Romania; over two thousand registration numbers, militia uniforms, traffic lights, all kinds of books; The Golden Book of the Militia, taken from the trash, thrown away, a very large, handwritten book.
“I collected all these things without ever thinking that I would make a museum. I collected so that they would not be lost, but now, being retired, having time and space, I hope that this year I will be able to make in the yard , at Mihai Bravu, a space where I can exhibit the cars in the most expressive way possible, accompanied by mannequins dressed from the history of those times”, promised Viorel Burcea.
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Tags: man Giurgiu owner King Mihais motorcycle car Moldovan commissioner
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