The night before the ACT club normally organize a dinner.   This year was a fun informal event, where we all had to guess some rare Mercedes parts, including a C107 glove box torch, fuse pliers, a wooden tool for pre-war radiator caps and more.   The one we couldn’t work out was why some compact (W114/W115) lug wrenches have a tab that means you can’t use it on alloy wheels.     And the same part number as lug wrenches that don’t have that tab.

This year I took my 560SEC and entered it the ‘Silver’ road class.    I figure it would be a good trial run for the road trip to Melbourne I am planning for November, especially after the recent transmission rebuild.    The car went very well and I didn’t notice anything I wasn’t already aware of.    The wheel wobble that I already knew about was quite annoying though.    I didn’t win anything, but I didn’t expect to.  My SEC is very much a driver, and would be lucky to even win Silver class.   As I have covered before, I think the Silver class is great and I wish the NSW event would do something similar.

This year one of the judges had to pull out, so I was asked to help.   I’ve never judged before and it was a good experience to do it for the first time.  I learned quite a lot and it also helped me really look carefully at the Gold class cars I was judging.  My allocation was exterior judging.   I think there were about 15 cars to judge.

The thing that became apparent was the need to separate the cars to make sure the excellent cars are separated from the really nice ones and the really nice ones from the good ones.    It meant that cars that looked quite nice on the surface in a particular category might get a score of 5 or 6, because there were a few grades of nicer cars in that category.     If I ever do again, my experience this year will be very helpful to do it better.

Having been involved in the judging,   I was keen to see the results, and the overall winner and runner up were very well deserved.   The winner was a 250SE coupe in amazing condition, and the runner up a 420SEL.     While these two were the clear winners my personal favourite was a green 220Sb fintail.   The owner had driven it up from Melbourne and it had an interesting and colour combination of a green exterior with a red interior.   It worked really well.    The paint wasn’t perfect, but it had a great patina to it.

The ACT show is always so well organized.   The event team had pre-painted lines on the grass for where all the cars should park.    The gold class cars were arranged in a circle around a circular flower bed.   Different models were parked together with signs explaining some details about the cars.    There were less cars from NSW than normal, as MBCNSW had a different event today.

Being focused on the judging, I didn’t spend as much time looking at the other marques as I usually would.   The BMW and Porsche clubs are more modern focused, but the BMW display had some nice older models.   The VW display is also quite varied, with plenty of beetles, Kombis and also more modern cars.

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As with the 2019 event, I chose to drive down on Saturday so I could show a car and attend the dinner.   This year I chose to bring my 560SEL on the trip.   The running issues on my 250SE are not quite fully sorted out for a long drive, and given the weather all year, I expected decent rain.   I also didn’t have undercover parking this year.

I entered my 560SEL in the silver division, which is basically for road going cars.   Its a great idea and one that I wish the club in NSW would adopt.   It really opens up the event for everyone vs people who have nut and bolt restorations or spend weeks with white gloves on finding that last spec of dust.

They have quite a good system where if you win silver class, you must compete in gold next time (full concours).  And if you win gold you must compete in champions class.   Next time I bring my 250SE, I’ll be in gold, as I won silver in 2019.   Assuming I don’t win in Gold that year I can compete in Silver the year after.    That promotion/relegation system means that everyone gets an opportunity.  Its a great system.     And a huge contrast with NSW that collapsed the categories putting it out of reach except for the super wealthy.

The highlight of the show was the 1938 230 Cabriolet B, owned by John and Sandra Green.    It’s an amazing restoration when you look at the before and after pictures.   pre-war Mercedes-Benz models are very rare in Australia and it was great to see one of this quality on display.

The ACT event always does well with the roundies too, there was a great display of them parked nearby the 230 Cabriolet.   I also noticed how many nice W114/115 saloons there were on display at the show.   That model seems far better represented in the ACT than in NSW.  I also admired a W109 six cylinder in very nice condition.  I love all the small luxury touches on the W109 you only spot if you look closely.     On the other side there are generally more SLs at the NSW event.  Maybe it’s the weather.

Overall there were about 80 Mercedes-Benz on display with a good selection of the various models.   Probably the only real exception were the ‘presidential’ class of cars such as the 300 Adenauer and the 600.   For various reasons, we only had about 4-5 cars on display from NSW this year.   In other years we have had up to 20, so hopefully next time we will be able to bring a big contingent.

The BMW display was very large this year.   You can see the different focuses of the clubs – the BMW club is far more focused on the new M models vs the classics that were in quite small numbers.   The same went for the Porsche and Audi displays.   The VW display on the other hand is a bit more diverse, with the Beetle and the Kombi favorites.

The 2022 ACT German car show was held at Queanbeyan park.   I thought it was a good location – better than the greyhound track used last year.   There was plenty of room for more cars if they choose this venue again next year.

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Offered for auction was an 11 window bus, which reached a hammer price of $158,000 after furious bidding.

Coming back to reality, somebody got a nice deal on a black Mercedes 220a Roundie for $7,500 and under the estimate of around $10-12k.    There was also little interest in a S1 Daimler Double Six Vanden Plas.   This car wasn’t perfect, but it should ahve been worth more than the $3,250 it reached.

A few other interesting cars came through, including a 1981 280CE for $6,500, a very nice W108 280SEL for $17,000, and a nice 6.3 for $50,500.

I don’t know a lot about them, but there was a very nice pre-war Rolls Royce that hit a little over $100,000.

All in all, this auction was pretty standard.   A few good bargains to be had, and fad cars reaching incredible prices.

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