Editors Note: This is part two in a series by Nick Gruzevskis about owning a Modern Mercedes convertible – in this case his R170 SLK230. The first part can be found here. Sometimes the journey on improving a classic car seems to be more fulfilling than using the car. I’ve now owned the Sally the SLK since July 2022. Every time I looked at...
Today was the annual Wheels car show in Queanbeyan. This is one of the biggest multiple marque car show in the Canberra area and is akin to the Eastern Creek show in Sydney. I joined the Mercedes-Benz Club of the ACT as part of their display. MBCACT always puts on a special display for this show and Wheels 2024 was no different. The goal...
We started our 2024 night drive schedule with a drive south. This month’s drive was held a week earlier due to the holiday long weekend and the absurd double demerits regime in NSW. In the days before the drive, there had been torrential rain, but luckily the weather fined up on the day and it was just a bit overcast. The recent rain...
I’ve been touring Tasmania in my 1990 Mercedes 300TE this last week and a half. While there are regular classic events here like Targa Tasmania I’ve been quite surprised how few classics I’ve seen touring around during my time here. It’s a great place to go touring in an older car. Not only is there great scenery, but there is little traffic, the temperatures...
With 2023 at a close, time for another fleet update. Like last year, I will cover the highlights and lowlights for each car, major worked performed, how much I used them and plans for the future. In 2023 I managed to drive my classics almost 18,000km. Classics need regular use or they deteriorate badly, so I’m glad I was able to drive them so...
While I was in Launceston earlier in the week, I visited the National Automobile Museum of Tasmania. This is a nice little museum quite close to the centre of Launceston. I had driven down to Tasmania in my 300TE, and had a few hours to kill before picking up my family from the airport. The National Automobile Museum of Tasmania was a perfect way...
I’m currently in Tasmania on holiday with my family. Our goal on this trip is to tour around Tasmania so a car was a must. On a trip like this, I had two main options. The first was renting a car – either paying an arm and a leg for a miniature van, or squeezing a family of five into something horrible...
In January, I’m taking my family to Tasmania on holiday. Instead of renting a car down there, I’m driving down and taking the Spirit of Tasmania. I’ll collect my family from Launceston Airport as they will fly down. Due to the cost of the Spirit of Tasmania, its actually cheaper to do it this way. It works out well, as they are not interested...
Our final night drive for 2023 was an old favourite. I ran a poll a few months ago for some of the regulars on the night drives to identify drives that there was interest to revisit. The drive from Galston Gorge to Cattai Ridge Road, Galston Gorge road and Old Northern Road was one of the most popular. I really enjoy this drive...
I fitted a set of original AMG Penta wheels to my 450SLC two years ago. At the time, they did not come with lug bolts. Luckily, I had a set from the replica Fuchs wheels that were on the car when I purchased it. The replica Fuchs wheels were the Australian made copies that were so commonly fitted on Mercedes of this era...
Thursday was the annual MBCNSW Night Drive to Bilpin for Apple pie. This has turned into an annual event and despite being a very late night is always popular. It seems amazing that another year has flown by, as it doesn’t seem all that long ago that we did the last Bilpin night drive. On that drive, I swapped cars with a...
Last year I did a road trip in classic Mercedes to the National Rally in Adelaide. The friends I went with all agreed that we wanted to do it again this year, and in many ways the road trip was better than the actual event. This year without a National Rally, we picked the MBCV Concours in Melbourne as our anchor event. We dubbed...
On the Concours Run, we had 9 cars on the trip. While I don’t mention people’s names on this site for privacy reasons, this article goes through the cars that came on the drive, with some background on them and how they went. All the cars made it back under their own power, and there were few mechanical issues to speak of. They are...
The final day of our road trip came up quickly. After a pleasant evening in the historic Hydro hotel in Leeton, it was time to head back to Sydney. Our first stop for breakfast was a bakery in West Wyalong. The drive was 130km, and went through far more farmland than we had seen yesterday. I guess this all part of...
Day 4 was a very busy day for the Concours run group. Not only did we spend the morning at the excellent MBCV concours event, but we planned to drive 520km. Part of this was getting to the MBCV Concours event, but the majority of it was our road trip home. Our stop for the night was Leeton. Our group was reduced by two...
Today was the MBCV Concours event. This was the show that we built this whole trip around. I had wanted to attend this event for years, as I had always heard the standard of the cars was high. It always looked like a big event and with more rare older cars than we get in NSW. The event was held at Wandin East...
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