Southward Car Museum’s annual Open House event is always worth a visit. It’s always busy, and a surprising array of vehicles turns up, from classics to the latest exotica. This year was no exception, and nearly all of the Wellington based Drive Life NZ writers were there to enjoy it. The event runs from 9am to 5pm but you need to be there early. The display area was packed with cars early on, with the second car park behind the museum also starting to fill up. It started to thin out around lunchtime, with fewer cars to look at, but new ones were arriving all the time.
Quite a few car clubs were in attendance, so you stood a good chance of seeing several examples of each type of rare or classic car. It’s great to see so many enthusiasts airing out their classics and gathering together. There was a live band, food and drinks trucks and vendor stalls, plus the fire brigade were in attendance with some of their impressive big boys’ toys. We spoke nicely to them and scored a ride in their Bronto Skylift, which gave us an excellent view of them demonstrating how they cut a car apart to rescue trapped car accident victims.
Fred had one of our test cars on show, the awesome sounding Chrysler 300C SRT, which you can read about in his upcoming road test review.
The workshops were open for viewing, with some rarely seen cars and bikes on display. I loved the Maserati Merak, not a car I’m familiar with but it is a beauty!
The museum itself has been re-organised since I last visited and it was great to see some new exhibits, including one of my teenage dream cars, a Lamborghini Diablo VT.
As always, it was a really fun event to attend. The weather was very kind to us, and I got to see some awesome and rare cars.
Here’s our video of the event.
Check out the gallery below for more photos.
