2015 Shannons Sydney Spring Classic Auction Preview

The regular Shannons auctions are always a great way to see an interesting collection of classic cars and know what they actually sell for. Many classics languish for months (and sometimes years!) on carsales.com.au with ridiculous asking prices, whereas with Shannons you know the actual sale price, not the inflated asking price.

There were two cars in particular I was interested in seeing – the Jaguar XK140 FHC and the Mercedes 280SE 3.5 Coupe. Both of these cars are on my ‘car bucket list’ and I wanted to see what they were like to understand the final price. The XK140 […]

My 250SE was built 50 years ago today

My 250SE Cabriolet was produced 50 years ago today, or at least I presume it was, since it has this date noted on the data card, and the first service was December 1965. The Original owner was the Australian Diplomat Brian C Hill, who collected the car from the factory and apparently took it with him to various diplomatic postings around the world. It stayed in his family until the 21st century, and outside traveling with Mr Hill, it has always resided in the northern part of Sydney.

The car is an early production example, as the 250SE was only […]

W111 Headlight Restoration

My 250SE was sporting the stacked style of headlights, which are quite popular on these models. Personally, I prefer the original type. I had some original lights, but needed to restore them before they could be fitted to the car.

The wear parts of the headlights are the reflectors that dull and rust over time, the gaskets that crumble (as can be seen above) and obviously the bulbs. The housings are generally ok, although they can be bent if the screws are tightened too much. The fasteners that hold on the lens can also break.

The reflectors and […]

The Citroen DS was launched 60 years ago this month

In October 1955, Citroen unveiled one of the most innovative cars ever designed. There have been plenty of new cars that have introduced a new technology, or even a couple, but the DS was so radical that it immediately made everything else on the market seem old fashioned. And this was just the looks. Under the covers, the car contained a revolutionary hydraulic system that controlled the suspension, gear change and brakes. This system would go on to be used for over 50 years. It was also licensed by other marques such as Rolls-Royce and Mercedes-Benz. In addition, there were […]

NSW Classic Vehicle Log Book trial starts today

I was down at the RMS today, putting my Traction on the new trial for a logbook style registration scheme in NSW. I really had been dreading putting the traction on the old historic scheme, but with so many cars I just couldn’t justify them all on full rego, despite how bad the old scheme was.

Under the new rules, you get to use your car for up to 60 days in the year provided that you log the entries in the ‘logbook’ (which is actually a sheet of A4 paper) and you are a financial member of your nominated […]

W108/W109/W111/W112 Mercedes headlight types

The headlights on the W108, W109, W111 and W112 Mercedes are all interchangeable, which means many cars are no longer sporting the headlights they left the factory with. They are all based on a design introduced on the 300SL roadster in 1957. The W113, W114/5 and W100 all had similar designs based on this same theme, but those lights will not be covered in this article and they are not interchangeable. The W110 had simpler, round headlights so is also not the focus here.

‘Lichteinheiten’

The standard headlights for these cars were know as ‘Lichteinheiten’. This roughly translates as ‘Light […]