MKIV Supra 20th Anniversary National Meet - Australia 2013

[Guest MrLolololXD]

Believe it or not, this year marks the 20th (!) anniversary of the MKIV Toyota Supra. Kind of hard to believe that Toyota brainstormed the idea of it and put it into production over 20 years ago now, with only minor tweaks over its 10 year production run.

 

To celebrate this milestone event of Toyota's poster boy sports car for the last two decades, a couple of members from the NSW division of the Australian Supra Club decided to put together an event, extending the invitation to all of the localised Supra clubs across the country, from Victoria to WA.

 

Although the number of people that turned up wasn't quite as high as initially hoped, 38 Supras in the one spot was still a sight to behold! The meeting place was to be in Bathurst, a town that's a 2.5 hour drive away to the west of Sydney, home of the Mount Panorama race track, over the 16th and 17th of November.

 

 

 

It was Friday night when I left, after quickly changing my gearbox oil, with my dad as my co-pilot for the 10 and a half hour drive to Bathurst from the outer suburbs of Melbourne. I did the first 2.5 hour driving stint out of Melbourne before my dad took over for an hour, before we decided to just call it a night and finish the rest of the journey in the morning.

 

We set out early Saturday morning and the weather was perfect! For as far as you could see towards the direction we were headed it looked like the perfect day, despite the weather forecast for Bathurst we'd heard on Thursday night. I started out driving again for a few hours before my dad jumped in and drove for an hour, then I jumped back in for a couple hours and so on.

 

With my dad driving, I had a bit more time to appreciate the scenery and to take a few photos while going down the road.

 

009 by MrLolololXD, on Flickr

 

The view from this area (can't remember exactly where this was) was amazing.

 

011 by MrLolololXD, on Flickr

 

Crossing the bridge into Gundagai, where I jumped back in and we made the first fuel stop with a quarter of a tank left. We stopped into a Shell station right next to the Dog on the Tucker Box and to my surprise, pulled in right behind the Midnight Purple '34 LAI' R34 GTR at the pump. (If you don't know that Skyline, Google it, although no pictures I've seen of it do it any real justice, it was stunning in person.) Sadly (stupidly), I didn't get any pictures of it.

 

022 by MrLolololXD, on Flickr

 

 

 

025 by MrLolololXD, on Flickr

 

 

 

A few hours later we'd swapped drivers again. It was at around the 200 or so kms to go mark that off in the distance you could see a storm brewing, the closer we got, the darker it got. It was around the 70km mark that we ended up driving into it and it was pissing down really hard for a while there.

 

031 by MrLolololXD, on Flickr

 

By the time we'd gotten to Bathurst the rain had eased off and it was just spitting, but another 1-2 hours later it hit really hard again. At least it washed some of the bugs off the front of my car though.

 

We drove around town for a while, scoping out the motels, before ending up at a schnitzel bar with the other Supra owners, but it was pretty crowded inside with all the people there, so we left and went to do a few laps around the Mount Panorama track, which just so happens to be an open public road when it's not being raced on. Man, if you think this track looks steep on TV you have no idea, the TV makes it look as flat as a gokart track compared to what it really is... Not to mention half the corners are completely blind, props to the guys that race over the top of that mountain at over 150kmh!

 

 

After doing a couple of forwards and reverse laps of the track, we ended up going to Maccas for dinner before heading to a local car wash and giving my car a good de-bugging.

 

059 by MrLolololXD, on Flickr

 

062 by MrLolololXD, on Flickr

 

065 by MrLolololXD, on Flickr

 

070 by MrLolololXD, on Flickr

 

 

 

I can say I was actually pretty happy when I woke up in the morning and looked out from the balcony of the motel to see it hadn't rained and that my car was still nice and clean after all the effort I put into cleaning it the night before.

 

087 by MrLolololXD, on Flickr

 

Mmmmmmm, those factory pumped guards...

 

095 by MrLolololXD, on Flickr

 

 

 

 

 

The itinerary for the day was to head to a place called The Hub for breakfast as a group, before going back to our motels to check-out and then heading on over trackside for the Bathurst Motor Racing Museum where we reassembled as a group. We hung around for a while, talking Supras, checking out titanium exhausts and doing exhaust decibel checks, before about half of the group went through the Motor Museum, while the other half took off around the track (which happened to be half closed on Sunday due to asphalt resurfacing), while the mastermind behind the event, Alex, organised a barbeque for lunch back at the museum.

 

After we came out of the museum we all headed back up to the top of the mountain to join the others for some group photoshoots and more chatting. We then headed back down the hill to the museum to reassemble once again.

 

098 by MrLolololXD, on Flickr

 

101 by MrLolololXD, on Flickr

 

103 by MrLolololXD, on Flickr

 

105 by MrLolololXD, on Flickr

 

108 by MrLolololXD, on Flickr

 

110 by MrLolololXD, on Flickr

 

I was really excited when I saw this in the Racing Museum, I used to love watching Lowndes behind the wheel of the Green Eyed Monster

 

 

 

 

 

when I was little. Best looking V8SC livery ever in my opinion.

 

175 by MrLolololXD, on Flickr

 

200 by MrLolololXD, on Flickr

 

203 by MrLolololXD, on Flickr

 

207 by MrLolololXD, on Flickr

 

210 by MrLolololXD, on Flickr

 

214 by MrLolololXD, on Flickr

 

And some stickers I thought were pretty funny.

 

215 by MrLolololXD, on Flickr

 

216 by MrLolololXD, on Flickr

 

Talk about squatting the rear end down under acceleration!

 

231 by MrLolololXD, on Flickr

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

233 by MrLolololXD, on Flickr

 

234 by MrLolololXD, on Flickr

 

235 by MrLolololXD, on Flickr

 

241 by MrLolololXD, on Flickr

 

243 by MrLolololXD, on Flickr

 

247 by MrLolololXD, on Flickr

 

245 by MrLolololXD, on Flickr

 

246 by MrLolololXD, on Flickr

 

248 by MrLolololXD, on Flickr

 

251 by MrLolololXD, on Flickr

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We then tried to line up on the front straight of the track for a photo, but I don't think that idea was welcomed with open arms by one of the track workers, so we took off. Not long after that it was decided that everyone would go for a cruise back towards Sydney, at which point I had to leave to start heading back home unfortunately.

 

So we split from the group, went and grabbed something to eat and then refueled before the long drive back home.

 

Back in Victoria, while driving down the Hume Freeway, at about 11pm at night, we kinda ran over the top of a Kangaroo, at 110km/h. We'd just swapped drivers again and my dad was back in the driver's seat. I was starting to get pretty tired by this point after sleeping for about 10 hours total since Thursday night, so I decided I'd try to sleep for an hour before getting back in to drive. About 15 minutes in I was just starting to nod off when there was a massive thump which just about scared the crap out of me.

 

I jumped and said "What the hell was that?!?", to which my dad replied, "A kangaroo". At first after just being woken up with such a fright I immediately pictured the front of my car all smashed up, before he went on to say we didn't hit it while it was jumping across the road, but while already lying on the road, which gave me a little bit of relief.

 

This being the Hume Freeway at night time there was no light around at all, but there was a sign almost immediately after hitting the kangaroo that said there was a service station only 2 kms down the road. So my dad continued driving after slowing down briefly to ensure nothing in the steering or anything had broken. We pulled up at the petrol station and I almost didn't want to get out to have a look at first, but luckily, THERE WAS NO DAMAGE. At all.

 

There were two trucks infront of us, one truck about 500 metres or so infront of the other one, then a Suzuki Swift inbetween the last truck and us. We can only think that either the first truck, or the second truck, initially hit the kangaroo and didn't slow down or brake after hitting it, then the Swift infront didn't see it in time, also travelling at 110kmh so didn't brake at all still giving us no indication there was a kangaroo in the middle of the road. By the time it came into our light beam it was too late to react and well, bam.

 

It was then I remembered I chucked my little work light in the boot with my car cleaning stuff before we left home, so I grabbed it and we checked out the underneath which was also fine, apart from some blood and fur. So we continued on towards Melbourne.

 

By the time we got back to my home town it was just before 1am, we stopped in at the car wash to blast all the bugs off again and all of the blood and fur underneath from the kangaroo.

 

257 by MrLolololXD, on Flickr

 

 

 

I had a blast this past weekend hanging out with other Supra owners and can't wait for the next big meet. Hey, they turn 21 next year, maybe we could hold an even bigger event?

[calster17]

Epic write up of the event & traveling! :D

 

Love the views down under and would would to see them myself. Would be great to attend a owners club meet, can learn some great stuff & nice to meet people you've only talked to online threw the club!

Also good that the Kangaroo never damaged the car as well as i can picture them being like deer on the road(both when alive or dead) and could have been a big repair bill (as well maybe injury's to you & your dad).

 

As you said, bring on the 21st Anniversary meet! ;)

[TIMELESS]

Good post, awesome plate :lol:

 

Yeah, for the 21 you'll all have to get the cars drunk.... somehow.

[Ryzza5]

Good to hear you weren't offline all this time because you crashed into a house... just trying to upload those photos I presume :lol:

 

Although as far as pranks go you really didn't stick to this one for very long :p

[hassan1995]

Wow Harley I mean what can I say it must of been a dream to see all those supras omg I'm so jealous of you right now, your supra looks amazing and it's good to see all the love put into it, not to mention all the other supras which look stunning.

:(

Fml I want a supra so bad.

 

I have to admit the stock supras and yours in particular stand out the most, most of the other supras look almost generic and something you'd expect too see which is a nicely tuned supra but the stocks look better IMO for me.

[TDUFREAK500]

Good post, awesome plate :lol:

 

Yeah, for the 21 you'll all have to get the cars drunk.... somehow.

 

E85 ;)

[Guest MrLolololXD]

Straight methanol

[TIMELESS]

Straight methanol

 

Is that like a fancy term for vodka??

 

I kid

[The Compensator]

So much Supra goodness I couldn't handle it if I was there. :bow: