| The final day of our road trip came up quickly. After a pleasant evening in the historic Hydro hotel in Leeton, it was time to head back to Sydney. Our first stop for breakfast was a bakery in West Wyalong. The drive was 130km, and went through far more farmland than we had seen yesterday. I guess this all part of the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area. During a stop to let the convoy regroup, I noticed a grinding noise from my engine bay. Using a hammer as a sound transmitter, it was clear the noise was coming from my alternator. I […] Day 4 was a very busy day for the Concours run group. Not only did we spend the morning at the excellent MBCV concours event, but we planned to drive 520km. Part of this was getting to the MBCV Concours event, but the majority of it was our road trip home. Our stop for the night was Leeton. Our group was reduced by two for the trip home. The owners of the two S124 wagons were staying in Melbourne another day. We left the concours at a little after 12:30PM, and headed for Black Spur drive, which I had read […] The third day of our classic Mercedes road trip was focused on a MBCV Garage Day. The subject was electrical troubleshooting. However, before we could have the MBCV Garage day, we had to get there. We started in Traralgon, and drove to Ferntree Gully (A suburb of Melbourne) to the MBCV club rooms for the garage day. For the once and only time on this trip, we took the motorway. I guess in keeping with this trip, while it carries the ‘M’ designation, it wasn’t really a proper motorway as it didn’t bypass many towns. The drive in was uneventful, […] The second day of our classic Mercedes road trip between Sydney and Melbourne focused mostly on driving the Great Alpine Road (B500). On Day 1, we started in Mt Victoria and ended up in Tumut. We started early, at 6:30AM to maximise daylight hours. Our destination was Corryong for a breakfast stop. This first leg was rather scenic and we stopped a few times to get some good photos of the cars at various spots. At Corryong, we had breakfast at a country bakery, before heading off to our next destination, which was Myrtleford. The road between Corryong […] Today was the first day of our epic road trip to Melbourne in 9 classic Mercedes Benz. Our goal was to head down for the annual MBCV concours event and a tech day they were running the day before. I previously covered the plan for the trip. Our destination today was Tumut. Before we even started, we lost one of the cars. One of our group had purchased a lovely ‘new’ W108 280SE 3.5 earlier this year. It’s a really nice car, but it had not seen a whole lot of use in recent years. Unfortunately all the work required […] Last year, I went on a 4,000km road trip with some friends from the Mercedes-Benz club to the National Rally in Adelaide. We all took classics, and we took the scenic route there and back. In may ways, the trip there and back was better than the event. For 2023, while there was no National Rally, we were keen to do another. We picked the Mercedes-Benz Club of Victoria’s annual concours event. I’ve wanted to go to this for years, as I had heard the standard of the cars at this show is very good. In addition, at a S124 […] Today was the third annual Youngtimer Sacco day. This is an event run by the Mercedes-Benz club to celebrate the cars of the legendary designer, Bruno Sacco. As with the last two, the event was held at HARS. HARS is an aviation museum located at Shellharbour Airport in Albion Park NSW. The event is focused on the cars designed by Bruno Sacco, but other cars could attend. Sacco was lead designer for Mercedes-Benz from 1975 to 1999. His era covers a number of key models in Mercedes-Benz history such as the W126, W201, W124, R129, R230 and more. Sacco […] After weeks of warm sunny weather, a cold and wet change rolled into Sydney to perfectly align with our October night drive. This cut numbers drastically, and we ended up with three cars. The weather was better for the actual drive, and we just had occasional light showers. The genesis for this route came from a motorcycle app designed to find good roads in an area. One of our regulars on the drives suggested it. With a few minor tweaks to the route (mostly to set a good start and ending spot) we gave it a try. It came up […] The September 2023 night drive was a bit closer to the city than the last one. We started at Mt Colah and finished in Brookvale. Due to some rain earlier in the week, and it being school holidays, we only had three cars on the drive, but that made it very easy to keep the group together. I took my 560SEL, and on the drive we had two W124’s – a 230E and a 300E. Both are regulars for these drives. There were some quite twisty roads going down towards bobbin head so it was kind of fun throwing a […] For August, the monthly MBNSW night drive was back up north. The route started in Windsor, taking the putty road up to Bull Ridge road, across to the Sackville Ferry, up to the top of Wisemans Ferry road, then to Dural McDonalds down the Old Northern Road. These are all really nice driving roads, with little traffic at night. While the night before had been a big downpour, the weather was great on the day of the drive. We had nine cars on the drive in the end. This is a really good number to keep the group together. We […] | |
