W123 50th Anniversary – Day 1: Drive to Canberra

In January 1976, the W123 was launched on a cold and snowy day in Stuttgart.   It would prove to be one of the most iconic models in Mercedes-Benz history.   The W123 has since become a bit of a cult classic.  It is still probably the best entry point into classic Mercedes-Benz ownership.

50 years later, the Australian Mercedes-Benz clubs and the W123 facebook group, led by MBCACT are celebrating the anniversary of this model that appealed to taxi drivers and luxury car buyers alike.

The event is being held in Canberra, as its the most centrally located city for such an event, being very accessible from both Sydney and Melbourne, and reasonable accessible to Adelaide and Brisbane.

The core of the event is over the Australia day long weekend.  Today is mostly about getting to Canberra and attending the welcome BBQ.   The event has been designed to be as accessible to W123 owners as possible.

Instead of a fixed agenda and a cost to register for the event, it has been set up as individual events that people can choose to attend or not-attend as they like.   That means some people may choose just to attend the show and shine only, while others like me will attend the entire thing.   I think this is the best way of doing things.   That includes there being no event hotel.  People can choose to stay where they want in Canberra that fits in with their budget.   On car events, I prefer to choose basic accommodation as I’m only using it to sleep, and don’t spend any time in the room.  It just needs to be clean, have air conditioning, a private bathroom and decent parking.

While a lot of the heavy lifting to set this event up has been done by MBCACT, each of the state clubs had a volunteer to be part of the event committee.   I volunteered to be the MBCNSW representative.   This involved creating a drive down for those who wanted to do the entire event.

We met up with a group from MBCQ at Pheasants Nest to do the main part of the drive down to Canberra together.   In the end we had 12 cars, although we picked up one of them along the way.   Seven from NSW and Five from Queensland.   That included two coupes (both 280CE’s) and a wagon (at 300TD), with the rest sedans.   The sedans were made up of 240D, 300D, 230E and 280E models.     I would have liked a few more cars from NSW, but I know quite a few people are driving down tomorrow.   Mileages in our group ranged from the 300TD with almost half a million kilometers to one of the 300Ds that only had 28,000km.

We drove together from Pheasants Nest to Weereewa Lookout at Lake George.  I found my 240D was able to maintain normal freeway speeds on all the hills except for one.  I think that is pretty good.   This was with my AC on max the whole time.

At Weereewa Lookout we stopped to get some photos of our whole convoy.  From there, we went our separate ways to our various accommodation.

At 6PM, most of us met up at Black Mountain Peninsula for a welcome BBQ.   I was impressed by the number of cars we had at the BBQ, given how many are coming in tomorrow.   The event was kindly catered by one of the MBCACT members, which was incredibly generous.   There were a good number of local cars as well as quite a big contingent from MBCV and at least one car from South Australia.     There was a good variety of cars in various different colours.  Its a great reminder that it used to be possible to buy cars in colour, instead of monochrome like today.  There were a few cars that are now rare like the 230 and 250.

The weather was the total opposite of the original Launch in Stuttgart. It was hot and sunny, and I am very glad I had my A/C regassed for this event.