MBCNSW Chrome Bumper day 2025 at Linnwood House
Last year MBCNSW held an event at Linwood House for the first time. Linnwood house is a historic homestead in Guildford that has four open days per year. Each of them has various car clubs and attractions attend.
The goal of the event was to try and entice out some of the interesting older cars in the club that rarely come to events. Last year seemed like a good start so we decided to run the event again this year. I personally really like the Linwood house open days. There are normally other really interesting cars, and its a very easy and relaxed day where you can come and go as you want. I used to go as a spectator when the Rolls Royce club would display there.
This year there were excellent displays from the Rover club, the Holden FB-EK & FE-FC Holden Car Clubs, Wolseley Car Club, MG Restorers Car club and Ducati owners clubs. The Ducati club and Rover club were having their concours event. I’m a big fan of Rovers, in particular the P5 and P6 models. It was nice to see their display. I don’t really know much about motorcycles, but the Ducati display was large and impressive.
Coinciding with the event was the 60th anniversary of the introduction of the W108 and W109 models at the Frankfurt Auto show on the 16th of September 1965. It was an opportunity to celebrate the W108 and W109, as well as the 250SE coupe and cabriolet models that made their debut at the same show. In fitting with this, I took my 1965 250SE Cabriolet which was made in October 1965.
Our display was a bit up and down. We had pretty good sign ups for the event but actual attendance was pretty limited. That was a surprise given how nice a day it was. On the positive side, there was a rare early 300GD which was a real time warp. We also had a C114 280CE in amazing condition, plus an excellent original 220SE Coupe and 280SE 3.5 coupe. In addition, a new member brought his W108 280S manual along. The car has been in his family since new. It was purchased new by his father in Singapore and then brought to Australia when the family moved here. The car had been laid up for a couple of years and has recently been put back on the road.
Being a car sold new in Singapore it was a CKD car, probably made in Malaysia. And of course given the Singaporean Heritage, it has an elaborate Nippondenso boot mounted air conditioning system installed. It would have been far more powerful than the factor air, and even has a small refrigerator in the boot for drinks. The system is not currently working, but can hopefully be repaired.
I think for next year if the club attends one of the Linnwood House open days, we should re-think the type of event. There doesn’t seem like there is a lot of interest in its current form. It seems like it would be better to combine it with some other event to broaden appeal and also have others to help with promotion.
