Bay to Birdwood – Day 4 – Adelaide Hills
Today was the fourth day of our big road trip to the Bay to Birdwood. However this day is unlike any other in that we didn’t do much driving. Today was meant as a slower today to rest a bit in the middle of the trip. It was also an opportunity to see some other automotive related things and immerse ourselves in the car culture of the day before the actual Bay to Birdwood event.
We started in the picturesque town of Strathalbyn. We all met for breakfast at 9AM at the local bakery. Strathalbyn is a really nice town and we had some time to explore it a bit. The bakery was pretty good too.
There were two sights we had on our itinerary for the morning. Collectible Classic Cars and Gilberts Motor Museum. As we had breakfast, one of the guys in our group pointed out that he had seen the Adelaide Rally was running today and one of its stages went right through the road we planned to drive to Adelaide that day.
Collectible Classic Cars
Collectible Classic Cars is a car dealership in Strathalbyn, specializing in classic cars. I’ve been following their Facebook page for years and they always seem to have nice classics come through, and the prices never seem to be silly. They always seem to have a bit of everything, from Aussie Muscle, to Europeans to random estoteric stuff. Since we were in the area, it seemed a great opportunity stop by their showroom.
I was pretty impressed by what they had. If I could have taken a car home with me, it was the restored Jaguar MK2 3.8 MOD. The restoration seemed top notch, it was the right spec, had a red interior and hadn’t been restomodded. I really liked it. They had two other MK2s on display, a red 3.4 Automatic and a white 3.4 manual.
While the inventory changes quite a lot, when we were there they seemed to have quite a lot of British sports cars, like Lotus, Triumph, MG etc, as well as Australian made cars. It was well worth a visit.
Gilberts Motor Museum
Also located in Strathabyn is Gilberts Motor Museum. It occupies the site of a long time car dealership. It has been open about 5 years and is staffed by volunteers and the cars on display are on loan. This means the collection probably changes a fair bit.
The museum is much larger than it looks from the outside and they had a great collection of cars. Obviously given the location of the museum in South Australia, there was quite an emphasis on locally built cars. However, beyond that there was an incredible amount of variety. While I don’t know much about them there were also a lot of motorbikes too. Plus the museum as full of memorabilia.
In addition, the museum wasn’t the only places to see interesting cars. The parking lot wasn’t bad too. While we were there, there was a Ferarri 512BB, a Mercedes E36 AMG and a good group from the Mitsubishi club.
Angas River Scenic Drive
After seeing the dealership and the museum, our next stop was to drive to Adelaide. Our planned route was Angas River Scenic Drive, through towns like Echunga, and Sterling. However, the Adelaide Rally changed that. We decided to first wash the cars in Strathalbyn, and try and time our arrival to Aldgate in time to see some of the rally cars.
There was a self service car wash near the hotel we stayed at the night before. We headed there first to wash the cars. I got pretty lucky, the lady in front of me in a Rav 4 had paid for 30 minutes of the car wash, then driven off with 23 minutes left. Not only did I get a totally free wash, but so did the owner of the white 280CE who was after me in the same bay.
After the wash, we headed out. The Angas River Scenic Drive was excellent. It was an amazing twisty road, with an excellent road surface and beautiful scenery. It was a road where you could push the cars along inside the posted speed limit.
At Aldgate we parked and found somewhere for lunch called Dirty Doris’ Diner. It was actually pretty good.
Adelaide Rally
The Adelaide Rally is the largest tarmac rally in the southern hemisphere, held around Adelaide over multiple days. It was quite a coincidence that not only was it happening on the day we were there, but it had taken over a stretch of the road we planned to drive, at exactly the time we planned to drive it. I was totally unaware of this, which was a bit of a miss on my part.
We positioned ourself at the start of that stage and waited for the cars to arrive. They ended up being a bit late. When the first car arrived, we were shocked to see it was a modified 450SLC. It had a 5.0 badge on the back, but given it was RHD, was probably a 450SLC with the engine out of a 500SEL. It had also been fitted with a manual gearbox and the door trim was removed. The 5.0 sounded pretty good taking off.
The first group of cars were the competitive ones. There was a nice mix of modern and classic, although I preferred the classics. After the first 20-30 competitive cars came the rest of the entrants. There are are not competitive and are speed limited, so they don’t require roll cages or helmets. At first these were interesting too, but after you have seen 100 Porsche 911s or BMW M3’s take of it gets pretty monotonous. The 911 monotony was broken by some interesting cars though, such as a Ferrari 328, followed by a Testarossa, followed by a Daytona. Not long after those a 308GT4 that stalled at the start line.
The 911’s and M3s were expected. What was a shock was seeing a fair number of fat SUVs in the field. Some joker brought a modern range rover to the event. While the other cars had exciting starts with engines revving and tyre smoke, the poor old range rover lumbered up the hill like the beast of burden it is. It looked like it was on the way to the school run, not a Rally event.
Despite all that, It was a nice unexpected benefit of the day to see the Adelaide Rally.
Drive into Adelaide
After we got bored of 911 monotony, we got back in our cars and did the rest of our drive, minus the closed section. At some points we were even driving with some of the rally cars down through the Adelaide Hills.
Down some of the steep hills the 500SL managed to overheat its brakes, but a short stop had them cooled off and ready to continue. We refuelled the cars near our hotel, and then headed to check in.
Our hotel was already busy with Bay to Birdwood entrants, with a man driving a 20’s Rugby Tourer telling me he also owned a 450SE just like mine. After admiring some of the other cars t the hotel, we went over and ate at a local pub.
