| The April 2024 night drive was a repeat of a route we last did two years ago. On that night, I tried two different cars before withdrawing, both of them having brake issues. In addition, recent bad weather kept the numbers down. This month was a much better experience all around. The drive was dubbed the ‘Bridge to Bridge’ drive. Basically we would take the back roads from Windsor Bridge in the north west to Peats Ferry Bridge in the north, going via Berowra Waters ferry. Since it was a double demerits weekend, the 240D seemed like the perfect car […] One of my favourite day trip drive near Sydney is the Oberon to Goulburn Drive. I’ve done this drive in both directions and its a great mix of different roads, plus limited traffic. I even incorporated this road in my recent trip to Melborne. I had also seen that the parallel road that goes south out of Bathurst was also paved in the last 10 years. This road head south until it hits Crookwell, where you can either keep going south to Gunning, or veer off to Goulburn. I wanted to try this as another full day trip from […] This month’s night drive was a bit different. Instead of meeting up and doing a drive for 60-90 minutes, we did a very short drive and then went to check out the club library. I’ve been a member of the Mercedes Club for between 10 and 15 years. I knew the club had a library, and I heard it was pretty good, but I had never seen it. As the library was located in the club store room, this felt like a great night drive destination. The night drives are normally attended by around five to ten cars. This is […] This months night drive fell on a leap day, September 29. The next time a leap day falls on a Thursday will be 2054, so it was a night not to be missed. The main part of the drive was to drive the back roads of southwest Sydney, starting with Mulgoa Road. Last year we had a drive that started from Krispy Kreme Penrith. It was quite popular, as a few people bought a box of doughnuts to take home for the family. This seemed like a good place to start this drive, as it was on the Mulgoa road […] We started our 2024 night drive schedule with a drive south. This month’s drive was held a week earlier due to the holiday long weekend and the absurd double demerits regime in NSW. In the days before the drive, there had been torrential rain, but luckily the weather fined up on the day and it was just a bit overcast. The recent rain did have one impact – we had to change our route along the way. This was to be the same route we did in July 2022. However, McKel Ave, which would have taken us down into the […] I’ve been touring Tasmania in my 1990 Mercedes 300TE this last week and a half. While there are regular classic events here like Targa Tasmania I’ve been quite surprised how few classics I’ve seen touring around during my time here. It’s a great place to go touring in an older car. Not only is there great scenery, but there is little traffic, the temperatures are not too hot, the roads are mostly great, and its not speed camera infested. I drove down from Sydney and took the car on the Spirit of Tasmania. In addition, the roads are quite twisty […] I’m currently in Tasmania on holiday with my family. Our goal on this trip is to tour around Tasmania so a car was a must. On a trip like this, I had two main options. The first was renting a car – either paying an arm and a leg for a miniature van, or squeezing a family of five into something horrible like an MG ZS. The second was driving my own car down and touring around in that. This could have been my wife’s modern car – an S211 E350 Mercedes, or one of my classics. For me, it […] Our final night drive for 2023 was an old favourite. I ran a poll a few months ago for some of the regulars on the night drives to identify drives that there was interest to revisit. The drive from Galston Gorge to Cattai Ridge Road, Galston Gorge road and Old Northern Road was one of the most popular. I really enjoy this drive myself as it has some sections with tight ocrners as well as some faster parts along the old Northern Road. Generally the roads are in good order, except for the section of Pitt Town Dural road which […] Thursday was the annual MBCNSW Night Drive to Bilpin for Apple pie. This has turned into an annual event and despite being a very late night is always popular. It seems amazing that another year has flown by, as it doesn’t seem all that long ago that we did the last Bilpin night drive. On that drive, I swapped cars with a friend and drove his 450SE up to to Bilpin while he drove my 280SE. This time I was also behind the wheel of a 450, this time my 450SLC. Considering it threatened rain all day, the turn out […] Last year I did a road trip in classic Mercedes to the National Rally in Adelaide. The friends I went with all agreed that we wanted to do it again this year, and in many ways the road trip was better than the actual event. This year without a National Rally, we picked the MBCV Concours in Melbourne as our anchor event. We dubbed our trip The Concours Run 2023. As with last year, the drive was an integral part of the whole experience. It wasn’t just about getting there, it was about the journey. Great roads, camaraderie with friends, […] | |
