Youngtimer Sacco Day 2024

Today was one of the premier events in the MBCNSW Calendar – Youngtimer Sacco Day.   The purpose of the event is to celebrate the cars of the late Bruno Sacco, previously head of design at Mercedes-Benz.   This is the fourth time the club has run Sacco Day, having held previous events in 2020, 2021 and 2023.

The thing that makes this event great is that its always a combination of great driving roads, an interesting destination, and the theme of the Sacco cars.  The past three events have had HARS as the destination, but this year the event was all new.   As much as I like HARS, I am glad the organizers decided to shake it up this year.  Even good events can go stale if they don’t change and evolve.

For 2024, the destination was Mt Panorama Race track in Bathurst.   The idea was to take some good roads up to Bathurst, have lunch at the track, do a lap and then see the museum.   The lunch was to include special guests of Aussie racing legends to talk about their time driving the track.

This was the first event since the recent passing of Bruno Sacco, at age 90.   Sacco was hired by Mercedes-Benz as a stylist in 1958, and became head of design in 1975 after the retirement of Frederich Geiger.   He would hold that position until 1999.   While Sacco contributed to many deigns under Geiger, he is best known for the models that were designed while he was head of the Styling Department. Timeless classics such as the W126, W124, W129, W201 etc.

I am lucky enough to own three Sacco cars – my 1987 560SEL and SEC, as well as my 1990 300TE.  I took my 560SEL.   Primarily because its a very comfortable road trip car and I have driven it less than the other two this year.  I also took two of my kids with me – they have enjoyed the previous Sacco days at HARS.

The meeting point was a hotel in Penrith.   Numbers were a fair bit down from prior events.   I’m not sure why as I thought the new event sounded really good.   Perhaps there was the perception that Bathurst is further than HARS, even though in reality that is not the case.   We arrived early at 7:20AM, so I could get the kids breakfast at McDonalds before the event.

Of the cars that attended, the A124 seemed quite popular this year with a number of very nice examples.

The drive to Bathurst was split into three stages.   The first was to the Botanic Gardens in Mt Tomah (on Bells Line of Road).  The second was Lake Lyell.   And the third was the racetrack itself.

The first leg was a bit of a shemozzle.  Instead of giving attendees directions with waypoints defined, there was a desire to keep the group in a very tight convoy the whole way up to Mt Tomah.   This was destined for failure. On these roads it would have been impossible to keep a tight convoy with three to four cars, let alone around 30.  We stopped to let the convoy regroup every five minutes or so, often blocking traffic and causing irate motorists.

In an attempt to keep the convoy together, it went slower and slower up the single lane sections of Bells line of Road, struggling to hit 50 in 80 zones.   The slower the convoy went, the more aggressive other motorists were in trying to get around us, causing us to stop even more.  It became a bit of a vicious cycle by the time we finally got up to Mt Tomah.  I’m surprised we didn’t have a road rage incident or an accident from other motorists trying to pass us dangerously.

By the time we got to the waypoint, there was a lot of frustration in the the group.  Some members were trying to think of ways of ditching the group and just going themselves.   One group with modern cars did in the end.   As it happened, the next leg as far better, not stopping nearly so much, and sticking mostly to the posted speed limits.   Since we were not going to slowly, the convoy stayed together more naturally anyway.

Without all the stops we could enjoy the drive and the roads were pretty good.   In some places the were quite bumpy, but the nice thing about most Sacco cars is they have wheels and tyres that are suitable for Australian roads.   Forged 15″ Gullideckels are not going to have any issues with a few potholes.  Especially with the amount of rubber between the tyre and the road.   In the W126 we hardly felt the bumps and cruised along quite happily.

At Lake Lyell, the planned stopping point was behind a boom gate, so we skipped it, heading straight for Mt Panorama.   On this third leg we didn’t stick to the route sent out the day before, I’m not sure if that was intentional due to being behind from the first leg, or an omission, but as far as I know everyone made it to the race track.   This even included the A124 with a jammed petrol cap – freed with a set of service station pliers.

We had a nice lunch at the Rydges hotel on the track.   As well as the food, we were entertained my anecdotes from a couple of Aussie racing legends – Phil Ward and Spencer Martin.  Their stories were quite entertaining and it was a nice addition to the day to have them there.

After lunch we did a lap of the track.   The track is a public road with a 60km/h speed limit.   It was good to see so many Saccomobiles driving around the circuit before we headed into the Museum.

The museum was a real revelation.  I’ve been past it a few times but never gone inside.  It looks quite small from the outside.   But actually it has over 100 cars inside.   We had a guided tour of the museum.  The curator is also the owner of a lovely W111 220SEb which was parked outside.

After the museum, my kids wanted to do another lap of the track before we headed home.  It turned into two, as we got stuck behind a box truck on the fist one.   Not sure who finds enjoyment in taking a box truck around Mt Panorama, but I guess others may say the same for a 5.1 meter German limo.

We ended up getting home at about 9:15PM – it had been a very full day and we covered 491km.   Events like these are what car club membership is all about.  We really enjoyed the event.  The only two things I would do to improve it is to send the google maps directions with waypoints and use the points between the three legs for everyone to regroup.  Plus it would have been nice to have a place to line up all the Sacco cars for a photo shoot near the track.

We are looking forward to next year.