November 2020 Night drive to Bilpin

The monthly late night drives are really starting to gain momentum.   This month was a bit different.  It started out as a Night drive to Bilpin.   As well as a drive, we had late night dessert and coffee.   Summer in Sydney is a great time for night drives.  The weather is pleasant and its a great time for convertibles or sunroofs to be open.

The drive started from the McDonalds car park in Windsor.   From there, the drive took us up Bells Line of Road to the Apple Pie Cottage in Bilpin.   The Apple Pie Cottage is run by a club Member, Sam, who opened just for us.    It was a pretty good event all around.  Hot apple pie and ice cream after a nice drive.   Bells line of Road is much nicer at night when there is less traffic.

The meeting time was 9:30PM.  Quite late, but it allows for people who work late or have kids to do what they need to do and home and then get to the meeting point.   We had 24 registrations for the drive, and a great turn out on the night.

One the drive we had a nice mix of old a new.   I took my 250SE Cabriolet.  A perfect night for open topped motoring.   A few others agreed as we had three R107s,an R230 and an SLK.   Also along was a W108 280S, a pair of 450SLCs, a 280CE, a W140, two W126s, an AMG GT and an AMG CLA45S.    The amount of power AMG get out of that 2.0 liter 4 cylinder engine in the CLA is staggering.   Not sure I would still possess a licence if I owned this car.

The two 126s are both lovely cars.  The 420SEL has just come out of major dash out work replacing the evaporator, and it was good to see it on the road again.    The 280SE belonged to a new member and it was a real time warp car in a great colour.   You can even see the condition of the paint under the wheel arches in the photo below.

The W108 280S is a really interesting car.  Its a subtle light green colour with a red MB-TEX interior and a manual transmission.  Most of the W108 cars that came to Australia were automatics in white, so this car is quite unusual.      I like it.

The Apple pie cottage, our destination for the night drive to Bilpin was also our destination earlier this year for a regular club drive.   We all enjoyed the dessert and coffee and left quite late for the drive home.