WHEN Rod Potter, of Hamilton, bought his 1955 Mercedes-Benz 220A from a fellow club member in the late 1980s, he knew he had a bit of work ahead of him.
"It was still going, but it was a bit shabby," Rod said.
Rod didn't intend to do a full restoration on the car, but "just needed to bring it up to scratch".
"It needed a repaint, some mechanical work and a general tidying up of the interior," he said.
Along the way, Rod taught himself to spray-paint: he figured if he was going to spend the money on getting the job done, he might as well buy the equipment and do it himself.
Rod, a fitter and turner at Sutton Tools in Hamilton, is club captain of the Hamilton and District Veteran, Vintage and Classic Drivers Club.
A long-time member, he will take the Benz on the 33rd annual club rally on June 12-14.
"The car's quite good to drive," he said.
"It's a little ungainly in traffic, thanks to the column-shift gears and large steering wheel, but it's a good cruising car."
Rally director Graeme Ralph said support for the event had been strong.
"We now have 115 entries and anticipate the final number will be very close to that," Graeme said last week.
"With each decade represented from the 1920s to the eighties, we have an excellent variety of vehicles coming."
Registrations have arrived from across the western half of the state.
Entrants are coming from Ballarat, Geelong, Colac, Maryborough, Echuca, Melbourne, Wedderburn, Warrnambool, Portland, Casterton - even Mt Gambier in South Australia.
The program opens on Saturday at noon with registration at rally HQ, the senior citizens' clubrooms in Lonsdale St.
The afternoon will see a drive to Blackwood Homestead near Penshurst.
On Sunday, the group will visit Mooralla and Wongaburra on the western edge of the Grampians before lunch at Cavendish hall.
That afternoon sees drivers calling in to the historic South Mokanger property at Cavendish before a return to Hamilton for the rally dinner.
Monday morning will see a short drive to Tarrington (former Hochkirch) for a presentation on the history of German settlement in the area.
- For more details, phone Graeme on (03) 5571 1454 or 0418 344 390.
