The event, the thriving Canberra car club community's annual big day out, attracted more than 1000 cars and at least five times that number of spectators.

Mick Gentleman, the ACT's planning, community services and workplace safety minister who formally opened the event, said the turnout was remarkable with more than 1100 cars, trucks and motorbikes expected.

One of the city state's best known car tragics, Mr Gentleman said the ACT had more than 65 vehicle clubs and that since its inception Wheels had raised more than $400,000 for charity.

Garran's Ross Merdal, an ABC cameraman whose winning combination of supersized classic and diminutive King Charles Cavalier spaniel proved a showstopper, agreed Canberra was very much a car city.

He caught the antique car bug as a boy in the late 1960s and early 1970s when his uncle, Des Rees, working together with Garth Fisher, restored Francis Birtles' record breaking "Sundowner" Bean before it became part of the National Museum of Australia collection.

"He'd turn up at our place in Narrabundah in the Bean and say `hop in, we're going for a drive'," Mr Merdal said.

"I've got a Bean of my own, of the same model, and I want to make it an exact replica (of the Birtles car)."

The Sunbeam 20/60, his current favourite which shared exhibition space with his two 12 horsepower Austins on Sunday, is actually a far more impressive vehicle and may also have a remarkable history.

About five metres long and weighing almost two tonnes, the car was an extravagance even in the early 1920s.

"This is the long wheelbase model," Mr Merdal said. "Almost all of these were bodied as limousines. Somebody in Tasmania who must have had a lot of money ordered this with a factory-built touring body. It is very rare to have a British-built body on a car like this as most people had the bodies built here to save on tax."

Charlie, the Merdal family's super cool spaniel, travels everywhere with the car and is so laid back about the attention he receives you are tempted to check his pulse.

"I bought this car as an unfinished project about six years ago," Mr Merdal said. "I'm not sure whether we got the car to match the dog or the dog to match the car."

A true enthusiast who believes classic cars are meant to be used, shared and enjoyed, he said the Sunbeam was a practical and capable machine.

"A couple of weekends ago we loaded the dog, a six-year-old and an eight-year-old and a tent into the Sunbeam and went to Woods Reserve at Corin," he said.

"There was an inch (25mm) of rain that weekend. Of course the car got wet; it's been wet before and it will get wet again."