The Concours Run 2023 – Day 3: MBCV Garage Day

The third day of our classic Mercedes road trip was focused on a MBCV Garage Day. The subject was electrical troubleshooting.

However, before we could have the MBCV Garage day, we had to get there. We started in Traralgon, and drove to Ferntree Gully (A suburb of Melbourne) to the MBCV club rooms for the garage day. For the once and only time on this trip, we took the motorway. I guess in keeping with this trip, while it carries the ‘M’ designation, it wasn’t really a proper motorway as it didn’t bypass many towns.

The drive in was uneventful, […]

The Concours Run 2023 – Day 2: Great Alpine Road

The second day of our classic Mercedes road trip between Sydney and Melbourne focused mostly on driving the Great Alpine Road (B500). On Day 1, we started in Mt Victoria and ended up in Tumut.

We started early, at 6:30AM to maximise daylight hours. Our destination was Corryong for a breakfast stop. This first leg was rather scenic and we stopped a few times to get some good photos of the cars at various spots. At Corryong, we had breakfast at a country bakery, before heading off to our next destination, which was Myrtleford.

The road between Corryong […]

The Concours Run 2023 – Day 1: Mt Victoria to Tumut

Today was the first day of our epic road trip to Melbourne in 9 classic Mercedes Benz. Our goal was to head down for the annual MBCV concours event and a tech day they were running the day before. I previously covered the plan for the trip. Our destination today was Tumut.

Before we even started, we lost one of the cars. One of our group had purchased a lovely ‘new’ W108 280SE 3.5 earlier this year. It’s a really nice car, but it had not seen a whole lot of use in recent years. Unfortunately all the work required […]

Planning a 2023 Classic Mercedes Road trip – The Concours Run

Last year, I went on a 4,000km road trip with some friends from the Mercedes-Benz club to the National Rally in Adelaide. We all took classics, and we took the scenic route there and back. In may ways, the trip there and back was better than the event.

For 2023, while there was no National Rally, we were keen to do another. We picked the Mercedes-Benz Club of Victoria’s annual concours event. I’ve wanted to go to this for years, as I had heard the standard of the cars at this show is very good. In addition, at a S124 […]

Youngtimer Sacco day 2023

Today was the third annual Youngtimer Sacco day. This is an event run by the Mercedes-Benz club to celebrate the cars of the legendary designer, Bruno Sacco. As with the last two, the event was held at HARS. HARS is an aviation museum located at Shellharbour Airport in Albion Park NSW.

The event is focused on the cars designed by Bruno Sacco, but other cars could attend. Sacco was lead designer for Mercedes-Benz from 1975 to 1999. His era covers a number of key models in Mercedes-Benz history such as the W126, W201, W124, R129, R230 and more. Sacco […]

MBCNSW October 2023 Night Drive – Southwest loop

After weeks of warm sunny weather, a cold and wet change rolled into Sydney to perfectly align with our October night drive. This cut numbers drastically, and we ended up with three cars. The weather was better for the actual drive, and we just had occasional light showers.

The genesis for this route came from a motorcycle app designed to find good roads in an area. One of our regulars on the drives suggested it. With a few minor tweaks to the route (mostly to set a good start and ending spot) we gave it a try. It came up […]

MBCNSW September 2023 Night Drive – Mona Vale Road

The September 2023 night drive was a bit closer to the city than the last one. We started at Mt Colah and finished in Brookvale. Due to some rain earlier in the week, and it being school holidays, we only had three cars on the drive, but that made it very easy to keep the group together.

I took my 560SEL, and on the drive we had two W124’s – a 230E and a 300E. Both are regulars for these drives. There were some quite twisty roads going down towards bobbin head so it was kind of fun throwing a […]

MBCNSW August 2023 Night Drive – Sackville Ferry

For August, the monthly MBNSW night drive was back up north. The route started in Windsor, taking the putty road up to Bull Ridge road, across to the Sackville Ferry, up to the top of Wisemans Ferry road, then to Dural McDonalds down the Old Northern Road. These are all really nice driving roads, with little traffic at night. While the night before had been a big downpour, the weather was great on the day of the drive. We had nine cars on the drive in the end. This is a really good number to keep the group together.

We […]

MBCNSW July 2023 Night Drive – Picton Road

Last night was the monthly MBCNSW Night drive. We didn’t do one in June, primarily because that week coincided with the week most of Sydney seemed to have the flu, so most people cancelled due to illness. We were back again for July, doing a route from Engadine to Campbelltown via Picton Road.

This drive was a bit of a combination of new and old. We’ve done similar drives before, but in the other direction. Last year we did a Camden to Engadine drive via Picton Road for example. However, in that case the only real overlap with this drive […]

MBCNSW Amazing Rally 2023

Today was my first ever observation rally. After having gone to car events regularly for well over a decade, I had surprisingly never attended one. The premise is that you and your navigator follow along a set of directions and get points for correctly deciphering the clues. Today, the MBCNSW was running one, dubbed The Amazing Rally. I thought it would be fun to give it a try. It was a requirement to bring a navigator. Why stop at one when I could bring three? I enlisted my three kids as navigators. They are 8, 6 and 6, and I […]