Macleans Bridge – May 2016

ICC Round 4 – Maclean’s Bridge Sports & Classic Car Festival
Sunday 22nd May 2016

Story by Daryl Wilson. Photos by Craig Wilson

Another year and another new venue for this event: the Qld Rifle Association at Belmont. The new venue is fairly central for everyone and we were blessed with great weather, unlike the rain that spoiled the past couple of years’ events. The Belmont range offered grassed berms and flat grassed areas which created an ideal display location for the cars.

The event was run extremely well by the Triumph Sports Owners Association of Queensland who estimated they had approximately 25 different car clubs at the event and approximately 450 cars. It was pleasing to see so many different marques represented.

The oldest car to attend was a 1926 Mercedes SSK Replica which is currently listed for sale for $198,000 in one of the car magazines. The Lotus Club had the third largest club representation at the event, with the combined Jaguar group having 44 cars, and the Triumph Club with 52.

This was also a round of the Inter Club Challenge, so the word went out for a big roll up.

Unfortunately, this event clashed with a round of the Morgan Park Sprint Series, so that eliminated a lot of the Elise guys who were competing. It was also only a few weeks after our official club Concours, so that may have also affected numbers.

We did still manage to get a roll up of 16 cars of various models:

We were advised that only one car from each car club would be entered in the Inter Club Challenge part of the event and the winner would be decided by the total number of votes for each car. It was agreed John Lungren’s beautifully restored Lotus 7 would be our representative. Regrettably there were many more Porsche members present, so they won the ICC event on the day.

The Interclub Challenge results were:

1st – Porsche (GT2 – RS)
2nd – BMW (2002)
3rd – Mazda (MX5)

The results of the judging for the other classes were as follows:
Pre –70 Sports Car – MGA Twin Cam – Ross Kelly
Modern Sports Car – Jaguar F Type Coupe – Peter Lehrke
Best Japanese Car – 1998 – Toyota MR2 – Douglas Cooper
Best Australian Car – 1972 Falcon XA GT Hardtop – Brett Cowles
Best American Car – 1960 Studebaker Hawk – Ross Oldam
Best European Car – 1973 Porsche 911 Carrera 2.7
Best Competition Car – Ferrari 500 Tipo F2 Replica – Tom Lane
Best Heritage Vehicle – MG J3 Supercharged – Ross Kelly
People’s Choice – Porsche 356
Best Club Display – Volvo P1800/220 Club

Paul Bingham (TSOAQ) organised recommissioning of an old trophy for the Best Triumph Sports Car in memory of Ted Davis. It was presented by Greg Tunstall to the owner of a very nice white Triumph Spitfire fitted with a hardtop.

Special thanks to Mike Taylor and Murray Clark (TSOAQ) for their assistance in providing results and other comments for this article.