Classic cars, dressing dapper and driving to raise funds and awareness for men’s mental health and prostate cancer research, this is the Distinguished Gentleman’s Drive. Over the past 13 years, the Distinguished Gentleman’s Ride has been creating waves and making a massive difference for the cause. After attending the “DGR” every year since we’ve known about it, we petrolheads at the office are always left with an unfilled void until the following year’s ride, but thankfully for us the last four years have seen the four-wheeled community jump onto the bandwagon with their very own “DGD”.
Yes, like the motorcycles, thousands of drivers around the world start their engines to drive for a cause. Each DGD is organised by passionate volunteers, to raise funds and awareness for men’s health through the Movember Foundation. For this year’s drive, we rolled out the 1962 Wolfsburg Beetle for the Johannesburg leg of the DGD, supported by iToo and Liqui Moly South Africa to name a few.
After creating our profile and paying our bid, this past Sunday saw us drive into what seemed like a 1960s film set in Parkhurst. You name it and it was pretty much there; from European exotica to the bespoke handcrafted cars from the British, American Muscle and some stunning German automobiles. Dapper was the brief and everyone came to the ball in their finest attire.
Parkhurst’s Nice Restaurant on Fourth Avenue was packed to the brim by 08:00 already, leaving petrolheads and families a full hour to enjoy Joburg’s finest food, coffee, classic cars and connecting with the like-minded before heading to the final destination.
My good friend Sean Fryer and I drove up from Pretoria in the bug to meet with Shaldon Botes from Liqui Moly SA in his Alfa Romeo Spider and another good friend Thabang Khatide in his classic Byron Thomas Properties soft top Beetle. Oh, and our editor-in-chief Simon Morton, who lives meters away from Nice pulled through in support of the DGD too.
Out of curiosity, I logged onto the Gentleman’s Drive website to find out how many registered drivers pulled through and to my surprise, South Africa was second from the top, that’s 326 registered drivers just in SA—with the event spread across 60 countries. The other two top performers were Australia with 373, England with 319 and America with 187 drivers. SA saw most of their drivers predominantly from the two flagship drives, Pretoria with 89 drivers and Johannesburg with 130. Although not a flagship drive, Port Elizabeth also has to be mentioned as they had 110 registered drivers helping the Movember Foundation collect a total of just over R231,000.
Back to the DGD and now fully caffeinated we set off on a mass drive up to Fangio’s Restaurant in Kyalami. The smell of clutch, engine fumes and other fluids filled the air while driving up Winnie Mandela and past Prison Break Market.
The smiles in and outside of the cars were pricelist as we slowly crossed the finish line under the iToo and Liqui Moly arch, drawing our 25 km mass drive to Fangio’s to an end. The DGD was in no way over with a field packed with classics, Pizza ovens blazing, and cues growing by the minute for refreshers before heading back into the blistering sun for more and some prizes to be won from Liqui Moly. The DGD soon turned into a car show where owners and enthusiasts hit things off like a perfect first date.
Liqui Moly had their work cut out for them with many owners walking up to their stand and quiring them on any number of products to use on their vintage machines. In the lead-up to the event, we treated our Beetle with Liqui Moly’s finest and were very impressed with the results. We look forward to preserving the bug with LM’s products until next year’s DGD and everything in between.
It’s events like these that help ease us, men, into opening up our hard shells and sharing our sometimes very personal matters with others, almost like releasing the built-up pressure we as men are so “good” at holding in. With men’s chances of developing prostate cancer later in life increasing, and one man dying every minute by suicide, we must do all we can to prevent more men from suffering.
Mental health is something that affects us all and together, we can make a change to help men around the world live happier and healthier lives. So, whether it’s opening up with your mates, deciding to join the DGR or DGD next year or even by supporting Movember’s Mission by donating, we encourage you to do so.
