CELLAR AGED

Cellar Aged

The ultimate Porsche garage in the grounds of a historic winery.

In 1928, the Steur brothers built this winery in Maassluis, the Netherlands. Their import business was founded by their father a century prior and taken over after his passing in 1878. Almost 90 years after the Steur brothers moved in, Marcel Cornelius became the new owner of the historic building in 2015.

It has taken six years for Marcel to renovate the building while painstakingly ensuring that the characteristic features of the property have not been lost. Now, it has become a perfect playground for leisure and living across 800 square meters. Marcel realised a gigantic lofty living space on the first floor where he lives with his family. Downstairs there is about 350 square meters of space for part of his Porsche collection.

Marcel’s love for Porsches goes back to his childhood. Toy Porsche cars were on the shelf as he dreamed of owning one someday. Well, it happened - and that's putting it mildly, because what you see here is just a part of his collection. Many cars are in original condition, or carefully personalised and able to be reverted to original state in no time. The restoration projects are long and cost a lot of energy, but they produce a beautiful result.

Now the renovation of the winery is finished, Marcel hopes to spend more time on completing his remaining Porsche projects, so that all of his 12 cars will be back on the road and track one day.

One of the headline cars is his early 911 hot rod, a celebration and personal vision that took years to complete. This project started with a complete and rust free very early ‘65 car that Marcel found in the US with 4-screw horn grills and ‘64 type window frames. It didn’t take long before the car was disassembled for a complete and thorough restoration of every part, and from there a number of modifications were made to make things more exciting.

It took six years for Marcel to renovate the building while painstakingly ensuring that the characteristic features of the property have not been lost.

Many cars are in original condition, or carefully personalised and able to be reverted to original state in no time.

It has modified suspension with anti-roll bars, vented disk brakes and vintage Brembo callipers as used in period by Ferrari were mounted to match the powertrain transformation. The original engine and gearbox were removed and put in storage and a much later 3.0L Porsche engine and ‘68 911S dogleg gearbox completed the conversion to a hotrod. But even with all of the work under the surface, only the racy interior and 16” wheels give away its pedigree. It’s something of a sleeper - the car is as fast as it is loud, to the big surprise of anyone who shares the road with it.

Marcel lovingly nicknames the car Nijntje, the Dutch name for Miffy the cartoon rabbit, because it looks cute and cuddly compared to his other sports purpose cars.