Youngtimer Sacco Day 2021

Today was the MBCNSW Youngtimer Sacco Day 2021 – The second annual event.   The day is to commemorate the cars of Bruno Sacco, head of design at Mercedes-Benz from 1975-1999.   As with last year, the event was held at the HARS aviation museum.   This event has become one of the biggest on the MBCNSW calendar.

Unfortunately we had heavy rain most of the day.   Not ideal for a drive day, but that didn’t stop a fairly good turn out on the day.   It’s a real credit to some of the owners in the MBCNSW that they still brought their cars out on a day like today.   To many classics become garage queens never venturing out unless the weather is perfect.   This is a shame as cars a meant to be driven and generally sitting unused is worse than occasionally getting wet.

Youngtimer Sacco Day 2021 started at Taren Point Bowling club.    The parking lot there had more room than the Mercedes-Benz dealership we started at last year.   After some time to look at the cars and for everyone to arrive, we left on the first leg of the drive, to Cataract Dam.

We took the Grand Pacific Drive through the Royal National Park, over Sea Cliff bridge and then up Bulli Pass to Cataract Dam.    Had the weather been good, the Dam would have been a lovely spot to have a bit of a walk and check out the scenery.   Due to the cold, rainy and windy weather, most people huddled under the gazebos.     There was a nice line up of cars in the parking lot though.

From the dam we headed to HARS via Broughtons Pass, Picton Road and then down towards Kembla Heights.    The chosen roads were really good – it was such a shame that the weather was so bad.   I would say the route was as good as last year, and last year was a high bar to follow.

Like last year, I took my 560SEL.    I was quite keen to experience my just rebuilt front suspension on some good driving roads.   The suspension is probably great, but the alignment is clearly out as the car was a real handful in the wet.   Really twitchy handling at speed, strange behavior during cornering and not a very enjoyable experience.   After my mechanic did the work, he sent the car to be aligned.   I’m not sure what went wrong, but my suspicion is that they used the wrong specs.    After I got the car back, I noticed it was making the tyres squeal on minor cornering, so I took it back for a 2nd look.   The alignment place assured him it was fine.   Its clearly not.     The W126 normally one of the most surefooted cars in the wet I have driven.

When we arrived at HARS, the cars were first assembled in a marshaling area.   Once they all arrived, they were brought into HARS in model groups.    I really liked the idea of lining the models up together, but this didn’t work very well on the day.   I hope they try again next year as it would make an impressive display.

Instead of a look at the HARS display and then a second drive to a different lunch spot, we had lunch at HARS and then were free to look around as long as we wanted.   Overall, I think that was a better choice.  While the food was nicer last year, it was better to have more time to browse the displays, and the food was fine at HARS.

Last year there was a section of the museum closed off due to an upcoming Qantas event.   This time that wasn’t the case, so we were able to tour the 747-400, the Connie and other large exhibits.   The 747-400 was VH-OJA, the first 747-400 operated by Qantas and the aircraft that set the record for the longest delivery flight at over 20 hours.

The club also had prizes for various things.   I managed to win the prize for the highest mileage W126 on the day – 335,000.     In addition, my two daughters were excited to be chosen to help give out the prizes.

The selection of cars at Youngtimer Sacco Day 2021 was more balanced this year.   Last year it was very skewed to the W126, the 420SEL in particular.   This year there was more balance of Sacco models, in paritcular a nice selection of W124s.   This changed so much I think I was the only 560SEL, but I think there were four LWB Nautical blue W126s on display.   There was also a nice selection of W126 SECs.

Overall the organizers did a really nice job with Youngtimer Sacco day 2021 and I look forward to next years event.