| Like all car clubs, MBCNSW has a lot of interesting cars that rarely get out to club events. The goal of the Chrome Bumper day was to try and entice a few of them out. The thinking was that an informal event that was fairly centrally located may be attractive for somebody who rarely takes out their older car. The event was held at Linnwood House, a historic house not far from Parramatta. Linnwood house has four days per year where their open days have cars on display. I’ve attended a few times as a spectator, mostly for British car […] The June MBCNSW night drive brought back a route that we last used in October 2021. It was held one week later than normal since I was overseas last week. That was probably good from a weather point of view, as it apparently poured all week. Last night was somewhat better, with only scattered showers. The more inner city night drives can be a bit tricky as it is hard to keep the group together. Last time we had cars all over the Sutherland shire – this time we did better with the group mostly together. We […] Last night was the MBCNSW May night drive. This drive was a little different to what we normally do. Instead of a longer drive on semi-rural twisty roads, this one was shorter and far closer to the city. The genesis of this drive came from remembering how peaceful it was up at North Head in the evening. The views back to the city and across the harbour are amazing. I thought it would be a good place to go to take some photos of all the older cars lined up against the view. The original idea was to start at […] 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 […] 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 […] 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 […] 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, […] | |
