| Last night was the now annual night drive to Bilpin. On this drive, we start in Windsor and then up Bells Line of road to the Bilpin Apple Pie Cottage. The owner is a club member with a R107 and he opens up for us and serves apple pies and coffees. The night drives are always more popular as we head into summer, and the night drive to Bilpin in particular is one people find fun, despite the very late night. On the drive, we had all classics this time, plus a Mazda! Surprisingly, W116’s led the charge with three […] Last night I attended the MBCNSW twilight drive to Ettalong. This is a concept that the club used to do in prior years but had dropped off the event calendar. Back then, it used to be called the topless drive, with the assumption that twilight in summer is a great time to drive a cabriolet. I attended that drive in 2014 and 2018. While it is great weather for a cabriolet, and a few members drove them, I took my 450SLC. I chose the 450SLC for a couple of reasons. Firstly, with the bad weather in Sydney, I really haven’t […] Last night was the monthly MBCNSW night drive. This drive was in the western part of the city. Starting from a McDonalds on the M4, we would drive west until we hit Mulgoa Road. Mulgoa road meanders through a semi-rural area with few traffic lights and minimal other cars. Nearly all of it is signposted at 80km/h, which is reasonable for this road at night. We would then turn onto Bringelly road as we drove eastwards to the built up part of the city and along Cowpastures road to our final destination. This was the Chubby Buns burger truck. The […] Last night’s drive was a variation of one we did a few months ago. Originally it was to start from the eastern side of Galston Gorge, and then follow the previous route. That took us along Cattai ridge road, Halcrows road, Wisemans Ferry road and the Old Northern Road. I always enjoy this drive, as it’s a nice cruisy route and there are almost no cars on the road. A few weeks ago, we were notified that Galston Gorge was closed for repairs. We moved the start point of the route to the western side of the gorge and changed […] This weekend I drove to Canberra to attend the ACT German car show. I will cover the show itself in a separate article. I chose to drive down Saturday afternoon to properly attend the show. Canberra is about 320km from where I live in Sydney, and about a 3:30 drive. If I was just going to view the display, it would be possible to do the whole thing in a day trip. However, to display a car makes it a very long day and I would likely be very drowsy on the drive home. When I last attended the show […] This month we had a shorter and less adventurous night drive. We started at McDonalds Thornleigh and took the Comenarra Parkway and Lady Game drive before crossing the harbour and finishing at Harry’s Cafe de Wheels in Tempe. Originally the drive was to finish at the Woolloomooloo location, but it has drastically cut back its late night hours. I guess this is a consequence of the shuttering of Kings Cross as a major late night venue. It’s pretty hard to find a venue open after 10PM that is suitable for these drives and isn’t McDonalds. Harry’s at Tempe closes at […] Earlier this morning I returned from the MBCNSW July 2022 Night Drive. We try to rotate the travel direction around Sydney, so this time we were going South. The drive was actually a repeat of one we did back in February 2021. That drive was quite popular, so we figured we would run it again. The drives in the dead of winter are less popular, so we had a smaller crowd than last time. One advantage of that is that it’s easier to keep the group together. We had my W111 250SE Cabriolet, two W124’s (A 230E and a 300E) […] This evening was the monthly MBCNSW night drive. We finally completed a route we have wanted to do since March of 2021, on the third attempt. It was worth those attempts as it was a great drive. We actually planned the route back in February 2021. To test out the route, we did an informal dry run with a few club members. We thought it was it was a pretty good route, so booked it for that March. Of course a few weeks later Sydney experienced freak ‘once in 100 year’ storms that flooded the route. Based on that, we […] After a month of relentless rain, we finally had a sunny day for the May 2022 Night Drive. This drive was a shorter one, The Spit to Palm Beach. We had previously done a Palm Beach drive in October 2020, so we took a different route. On the previous drive, we started at Manly and hugged the coast until we reached Palm Beach. This time we started at the Spit, and took Wakehurst Parkway, bypassing the traffic lights and built up sections. Wakehurst Parkway is a winding road through areas of bushland that are quite close to the city. […] Last night was the April 2022 MBCNSW night drive. Due to the terrible weather we’ve had in Sydney over the last couple of months, it was the first one since January. The last two were both rained out. We generally try to go if its raining, but the amount of rain and flooding made it impossible. The route was one I was looking forward to. The plan was to do a ‘Bridge to Bridge’ drive – from Windsor Bridge in the north west of Sydney to the Peats Ferry Bridge in the far north. This route goes through some nice […] | |
