Youngtimer Sacco Day 2020

The Mercedes Benz club NSW ran an event today to commemorate the cars of Bruno Sacco.   Sacco was head of design at Mercedes-Benz from 1975-1999.    The event was called Youngtimer Sacco day and I understand the intention is to make it an annual event.   Given the success of today’s event, I can easily see why.

The event started out at Tynan’s Mercedes-Benz dealership in Southern Sydney.   They were also the sponsors of the event.   Tynan’s is a large dealership, but their forecourt was soon overwhelmed by Saccomobiles as event attendees started to roll in.   The event was capped at just over 100 attendees due to COVID restrictions at the venues.   Had it been a normal year, numbers would have probably been even higher.

I took my 560SEL to the event, as the W126 is a Sacco creation.   I read an interview with him a few years ago and I seem to recall the 126 SEC and W201 as being to designs he is particularly proud of.   Others who attended the Youngtimer Sacco day clearly had a similar idea as the W126 was by far the most popular car there, mostly 420SELs.   The 420SEL is very popular in the club, so much so it’s almost a membership requirement!

There were of course other models represented at the Youngtimer Sacco Day.   There were a few nice W201s, W124s etc, although the numbers skewed to the 80s models and there were only a couple of the 90s and 2000s in attendance.   For the W124s there was at least three rare A124 cabriolets as well as a real AMG Coupe.

The first leg of the day took us through the Royal National Park on the Grand Pacific Drive.   This is a nice (but busy) drive through some good roads in the national park and over the sea cliff bridge.

The morning tea break was at HARS Aviation Museum.   This is one of those places I have been meaning to attend for years and never got the chance.   They have a really interesting collection of aircraft significant to Australian Aviation.   Its definitely worth a visit.    Not only was the museum really interesting but the line up was extremely impressive.    I took a couple of my young children to the event as they were interested in seeing the Aeroplanes.

It would have been logistically difficult, but it would have been quite cool to get them lined up my model given the number.   In any case, given it was Youngtimer Sacco Day, the Saccomobiles were all in the first row and then the other Mercedes-Benzes behind.

Once we finished up at HARS, there was a great route selected to take us to Moss Vale Golf Club for Lunch.    There were some great twisty parts of this road.   Surprisingly there was even a little floodway with about 1″ of water flooding through.   There were a couple of low slung AMG cars at the event that probably had to detour, although it was no problem for the W126.

The lunch at Moss Vale was quite nice, done in multiple sittings to comply with COVID restrictions.

The Club, in conjunction with Tynan’s had some nice door prizes.  I was lucky enough to win some detailing products.    The day was a big success and a credit to the organizers.   I hope it does run again next year.   Maybe they should also consider an Oldtimer Bracq day?   This could commemorate the cars of Paul Bracq including the W108/W109, R113, W111C, W100 and W114/W115.