Mercedes Clubs National Rally 2022 – Summary

I recently attended the Mercedes Clubs National Rally 2022 in Glenelg, SA. Not only did I attend the actual event, but I joined a group of friends in the MBCNSW to create a Classic Mercedes rally within a rally. We all have young children and its not easy to get a lot of time off work, so our goal was to pack as much as we could into as short a time as possible. I think we achieved that.

Instead of taking the direct route to the show over multiple days with the rest of the club, we crafted our […]

Mercedes Clubs National Rally 2022 – Day 7 White Cliffs to Sydney

We started the day in White Cliffs, after staying at the Underground Motel. I wasn’t looking forward to the shower in the shared bathroom, but they were actually a lot better than I thought they would be. Overall, it was a cool experience staying in the Underground Motel – I’m glad we did it.

Our drive today was to take us all the way back to Sydney. We would go via Cobar, Nyngan, Narromine, Mudgee and Lithgow. This would be over 1000KM, exact distance depending on each person, as the convoy was to split in Lithgow.

White Cliffs is at […]

Mercedes Clubs National Rally 2022 – Day 6 Glenelg to White Cliffs

With the rally now over, it was time to start our drive home to Sydney. Like our journey to Adelaide, we had planned a scenic route back. Our route takes us home via Broken Hill, Wilcannia, Cobar and the Barrier highway. Most of our group had not seen this part out Outback Australia before, so were keen to experience it as part of this trip. Today we would be driving 784KM. Our destination was White Cliffs, an old opal mining town.

Yesterday, our group had decided to leave early to ensure we got to our hotel while it was still […]

Mercedes Clubs National Rally 2022 – Day 5 Scenic drive to Lady bay

Today was the second and final day of the actual Rally. The two official events were a scenic drive down the coast to Lady Bay, and a dinner and farewell event. Start time for the drive was 10AM, so today was the only chance to a sleep in on our entire trip.

The drive was really good. Not only did we see some really nice coast roads, it was interesting to see some of the houses built by the beach. There were also many cars (mostly 4x4s) on the sand, something that you don’t really see in NSW. In addition, […]

Mercedes Clubs National Rally 2022 – Day 4

Day four was a bit of a change of pace for our group. We didn’t have many KM to cover as were are now part of the rally proper. The agenda for today was the Show and Shine and then an evening event, held at “The Cube”. Obviously, our cars were not in any state to display in a show and shine, so we got up early to find a local car wash. We had a tip from fellow MBCNSW members that there was a DIY carwash 10 minutes away.

Our plan was to go over before breakfast and get […]

Mercedes Clubs National Rally 2022 – Show and Shine

The National Rally included a Show and Shine in the morning to display the participating cars. The show and shine was held at Wigley park, a very nice spot near the Marina in Glenelg. The cars all had to be in place for 10AM as the show was open to the public from 10-12PM.

After a wash first thing in the morning, we assembled the cars in the park and it ended up being an impressive line up of Mercedes-Benz vehicles, old and new. I would expect around 80 cars were on display. My two favourites were the 220SE Cabriolets, […]

Mercedes Clubs National Rally 2022 – Day 3 Torquay to Glenelg

One of the attractions of this trip was to be able to tick off a few bucket list items. A big part of this was doing the Great Ocean Road in our own cars. Part of the design of our route was to ensure we did the Great Ocean Road in daylight – hence its position as the first item on our third day. The downside of this was that it meant for a very long days drive. Not only did we have to cover around 930KM, but we aimed to arrive in time for the welcome event at the […]

Mercedes Clubs National Rally 2022 – Day 2: Orbost to Torquay

Day two dawned on our trip to the Mercedes Clubs national rally with the situation that while the 280CE now had a full battery thanks to the trickle charger, it had no way of charging it while driving. Unless we did something, the car was going to run out of electricity. There has been a recent trend to electrify classic cars, particular in Europe. I guess this is what it feels like to own one. Nevertheless, we set off for our first stop, Stratford where we would have breakfast. Today’s route was planned to take us to Torquay and about […]

Mercedes Clubs National Rally 2022 – Day 1: Sydney to Orbost

Today was the first day of our epic drive to the Mercedes-Benz clubs national rally in Glenelg, South Australia. I am going with a group of friends on a road trip to and from the rally which I have detailed in a previous post. Our route took us from the meeting point at McDonalds Heathcote to Orbost, Vic and covered around 620km.

One of our group had made magnetic rally stickers for our cars, which was a fun touch. They are meant to look like those period rally badges and detail our route. The east coast of Australia has been […]

Planning a 4,000km Classic Mercedes road trip

In Australia, each state (and territory) has their own Mercedes-Benz Club. Most countries have a central club with regional chapters. This isn’t really all that surprising given the states could not even agree on basic stuff like a common railway gauge. Every two years one of the clubs hold a “National Rally” event on a rotating basis. The idea is members from all the national clubs get together at one of these events. The 2022 event is being organized by the South Australian club and held in a suburb of Adelaide.

This event was interesting to me because not only […]