Eastern Suburbs Cars and Coffee June 2022

It’s a lovely winter weekend here in Sydney.  Cool in the morning and evening, but pleasant during the day.    With a break in the weather, it felt like a good opportunity to take my 250SE to the show with its newly rebuilt brakes and recent tune up.    It was also an opportunity to take a drive with the top down.   I don’t think I’ve managed to do that all this year.

The new location is really convenient, one set of lights off the eastern distributor.    Plenty of parking and no fun police.   The real Police did a few drive pasts, but they are not concerned with minor parking infractions.

As usual there was a great variety of cars on display.    As you would expect from the eastern suburbs location,  a fair number of 911s, but also some more esoteric stuff like a Riley Elf or a Series 1 Rover P6B.   Probably the highlight was the vintage Ferrari – a different one from last time.

Also parked side by side was a Jaguar E-Type Series 1 3.8 and a Mercedes W113 Pagoda.   As a fan of vintage Mercedes-Benz cars, I seriously considered a Pagoda before buying my E-Type.   They are both beautiful cars and I would have been happy with either.   However, I think on the whole, the E-Type is the better sports car.    The Pagoda is a scaled down W111, and many of them in the USA were Automatic.   Its probably the better cruiser, but the E-Type is more engaging to drive and has a sportier feel.   The Pagoda is better made and has better brakes, plus the hard top was standard.    As values are pretty similar, I guess options are evenly split.

As well as the Pagoda there were a number of other Mercedes Benz models offering some interesting contrasts.    There was a late 450SLC parked next to a R107 300SL.   A good contrast of the two body styles available in the 107.    There was also a W115 240D and a W114 280E, highlighting almost the full range of performance in the W114/115 series.   I think i’m in the minority preferring the saloon over the coupe.

This show is good in that you can get there, have a good look around and be back by 10am.