Wheels 2026 ACT
Today I attended the Wheels car show in Canberra. Wheels is the largest multi-marque car show held in the ACT. I’ve been a couple of times before, in 2022 and 2024. The ACT club normally try and make a theme of the event, as there are prizes for the best display. They have won it on a few occasions too.
In 2022 they had a car representing every year from 1950 to 2022. In 2024 they did generations of the S-Class. They also did an AMG display one year, but I wasn’t able to make it. This year the theme was 50 years of the W123. Given the theme, I took my 1981 240D. This is the second trip my 240D has made to Canberra this year, as I also attended the 50 years of the W123 event in January.
I’ve always enjoyed this event, there are normally a good variety of cars. The last few times i’ve been it was held at Queanbeyan showground. However, from what I hear, Queanbeyan council are not as friendly to car clubs as they once were, so its was moved to Canberra. The new location is Thoroughbred Park, which is a horseracing track in Lyneham.
I had refuelled my 240D at $1.879 on the days the pointless war in the middle east started. My goal was to get there and back on one tank and have fuel to spare since diesel is almost at $3 per litre. I left Saturday afternoon and ending up driving through quite a big hail storm near Marulan. There was so much hail on the grass beside the highway it looked like it had been snowing. The W123 is made of thick steel, so I didn’t encounter any damage.
The Wheels event was held in the customer parking area and some parks nearby, not on the actual track. Lyneham is a central location, and easier than Queanbeyan showground, but there is far less room. In previous events the ACT club has been able to spread out and make a really good display. This year the space allocated was quite small and the cars were all jammed in.
Nevertheless the club attempted to show off the W123s by having a ‘fan out’ display in the middle of the allocated area. It worked reasonably well, but would have ben better with more space. There were quite a few cars that had to park outside the main area. The issue seemed more allocation than lack of space in general, as there was a big paddock behind the military vehicles that was mostly empty.
As with the W123 event, I was parked next to the 300D in 476 Goldbraun. Such a great colour and a car that has been in the owners family since 1981. There was a good selection of nine W123s including a coupe, a wagon, and all the popular models (280E, 230E, 300D etc).
In addition to the W123s the ACT club also had a nice selection of other cars, starting with a pair of nice roundies, a lovely red finnie, a beautiful W111 3.5 coupe, a W109 a couple of W116s, W126s W124s etc. It was a pretty good selection of all the major models of Mercedes-Benz.
As for the other marques, space seemed to be a bit of a challenge for the too. The BMW display only had a couple of classics. The new ones are all nostrils and a bit hard on the eye. Getting past those, there were some really nice and interesting cars on display. This included a huge American convertible with a folding metal roof. the rear of the car was very long to allow it to be stowed away. There were interesting curiosities like a Stanley steamer, a couple of Bristols and a pair of landcrab utes. The Jaguar section was quite good. There was a lovely Series 1 XJ6 with a manual transmission and a red interior. While white isn’t my favorite colour, a red interior and a manual transmission makes it very tempting. The red XJC was also very nice.
They didn’t just have regular cars, there were also military vehicles and micro cars. The Microcars were quite good.
The ACT club had a catered lunch which was a nice touch. The food at these sort of events is normally pretty bad and overpriced. Sandwiches and fruit from the club was a far better option.
The drive back was pretty uneventful. I arrived back late afternoon after covering 610km with abut a quarter of a tank left. I’m still undecided if I should refuel the 240D now, or park it for a few weeks to see what happens. Most of my other cars are full and I don’t really fancy $3 diesel.
