A recent conversation with my 12-year-old son (who in the last year, has discovered that cars, mainly Corvettes, Mustangs and various exotics, exist) got me thinking about the origins of my love for MGB's in particular, and British cars in general. I can faintly recall being driven around in the back (sitting sideways - would we do this nowadays?!) of an MGB Tourer - medium blue in color - owned by a friend's father. This was around the late 1960's or early 1970's, so I would have been anywhere from 8 to 11 years old. I have long ago lost touch with the friend but the memory remains....
In the late 1970's, as I was attending college in Boston, I decided that I would hitchhike from Boston to my parents home in southern New York State. I obviously did not tell my parents how I was getting home from school...! Going home, I was lucky enough to get a ride in a truck almost the entire way. Heading back to school, I was not so lucky. I got a ride from Route 684 to the middle of Hartford (and I DO mean the middle - I was literally dropped at the side of Route 84 just past where Route 91 intersects, a horrible spot with no room for a car to pull over!) and had to wait quite a while until an ancient, creaking Chevy wagon pulled over in the middle of the right-hand lane to pick me up. He was going to the Massachusetts border and had plenty of cold beer - both in his system and in the cooler beside me. He dropped me off at the last exit in Connecticut... where I proceeded to wait several hours for a ride... I started thinking that a sleeping bag would probably be a good thing to have, when a Butterscotch MGB pulled over and offered me a ride to Boston.... Top down, of course! This ride I remember like it was yesterday, 25 years or so later... My father had owned a string of large American convertibles, and owned one at the time, so the 'wind-in-the-hair' feeling was not new - but the lowness, the communication with the road, the agility - these were all new to me. And of course, the sound of the exhaust was incredible!
It wasn't until almost 10 years later, when my wife and I were living in Albany, New York, that I got seriously interesting in buying an MG. We had attended shows over the years, both in the Boston area and Albany, and started looking through the want ads. This was 1988, before the Internet, and I had no idea what to look for. I still have all of my notes on the various cars we looked for. I saw an ad in the paper for a 1976 MGB that 'needed a little work to complete' (we've ALL seen those before, eh?!). It was an overcast day when we went to look at the car. It had recently had bodywork done to it so the Brooklands Green paint was interspersed with many spots of gray primer. All of the exterior body trim was off the car. The Monza-type exhaust had a hole (or several) in the muffler. The car had radial tires mounted on the front and bias-ply snow tires mounted on the rear. (There goes the 'never driven in snow claim!) And the top was up - amplifying every little creak and groan. The good news was the engine had recently been rebuilt. We took the car for a test drive - and after we switched so my wife could drive, I was trying to think of how to get out of this when she turned to me and said 'I think we should buy it!'... So we did!
Making a long story longer, we had the bodywork finished, had it painted and drove it for a year and a half, whereby I proceeded to get hit from behind and pushed into a pick-up truck. Four years (and three homes later) we again had the bodywork repaired and have driven it ever since. It's been incredibly reliable and requires little maintenance. I drive it less than 1,000 miles a year but always try to do at least one 100+ mile trip a year. The rust worm is starting to do some damage, so it looks like more bodywork may be in the future... But that will have to wait, as in August of 2000, I purchased a 1965 MGB Tourer project car that is slowly being taken apart prior to restoration! I plan to return it to original factory condition. That will probably be a whole other story......
So I will set forth a few guidelines for those of you that are considering selling your car, based on my recent experiences. Many of these sound like common sense – but believe me, common sense seems to be lacking in many people who have the ‘best car in the world’ to sell!
1) Actually clean the car! An exterior wash is great,
and also maybe shampoo the carpets and seats,
or at least wipe up any stains that could remind a
potential buyer of a fluid from the human body.
2) Clean the trash out of the car. For example, if
you have to move piles of coffee-stained papers
(that end up being the receipts for work done on the
car) from the front seat so that one can actually sit in
it, then you probably should have invested in a box of
Hefty industrial-size bags. Oh, and don’t leave the garbage
bag on the back seat where the empty Doritios bags and
Coke cans ferment. Which brings us to the next guideline….
3) Remove any really bag smelling interior deodorizers. I mean,
the little pine tree hanging from the rearview mirror is okay,
but anything pink or yellow really should not be used in a car
interior. Especially a GUY’S car interior.
4) Be available for people to actually look at your car! Nothing like
making an appointment to look at a car only to ge an e-mail an
hour before (if you even see it) canceling the appointment but
advising that you can view the car ‘anytime before
Monday or after
5) When you advertise the car as being in East Buttcheek, it should
actually BE in East Butt cheek and not in Middle Botswana, which is
20 miles away from East Buttcheek!
6) If, for some reason, you re-advertise the car a few days after the
initial ad, the purchase price should generally be consistent or lower.
NOT higher. And it should not continue to increase every time you
advertise the car!
Postscript: The car lasted all of 3 months before my son wrecked it during a Nor’easter….. Fortunately, he was fine. But we had to go buy another used car……
I’ve recently been trying to get to shows early or stay late, to see the cars on the move.... This is really the point of them, right?? There were a number of trailers in the parking lot, and some of the cars that came up the hill turned left into the parking lot, to be loaded on their trailers, I suppose. But there were plenty of expensive-looking E-Types burbling their way up the hill and past the entrance to the ‘trailer park’...
The sounds - while there are slight variances due to exhaust systems, you can definitely pick out the unique characteristics of each car. It’s kind of like buying a house - you must look past the decorations and furniture to figure out the house’s essential character. It’s the same with our British Cars - once you get past differences in carbueration, engine tuning and exhaust, an MGB always has the underlying refined burble to it (although at times they can sound flatulent, like the GM V6 or the ‘fart cans’ the kids put on their sport-compacts these days). And even though they all sound a little different, I bet I can pick out the ‘British’ sound if I were blindfolded and listening to a stream of cars roll by…. There is something unique aboout the British sports car sound. My neighbor has an Alfa Romeo Spider, and it doesn’t sound British in the least.
As a contrast, several examples of expensive modern cars also rolled by - the Porsche 911 sounded very whirry, all fan noise and rattle, while the newer Jaguars kind of whished by - although the XJ sedans still had that undercurrent of low burble - just buried under all of the ancillaries, I suspect..... The Corvettes rumbled by, but again, compared to the V8 in the Daimler SP250 ‘Dart’ - no comparison. Again, I suspect ancillaries and too much muffling in the Corvette! The new MINI immediately following two ‘old’ Mini’s was an interesting juxtaposition of sounds - what a difference! Whereas the ‘old’ Minis emitted a high-pitched rasp, the new MINI made absolutely no sound - nothing made it stand out at all. Very disappointing. They got a freer-flowing exhaust on the very extensive option list??
Just as there is a difference in ‘reputation’ between the MG and the Triumph, there is a marked difference in sound. As you’re probably aware, the MGB is considered ‘refined’ whereas the Triumph is considered ‘racy’ - the connotation seems to be that the MGB is slower but well built and roomier, while the Triumph is faster but lighter and leaves parts in its wake! (I don’t truly know or care, I love ‘em both). From a sound perspective, the MGB tends to have a lower, more refined rumble, to my ear, while the Triumph engine note is one of slightly more excitement and ‘rasping’, a ‘hurry up, let’s get going’ type of demeanor - Tally-ho! The MGB seems to be saying, ‘whenever you’re ready, I’ll be here’. More of a stiff-upper-lip....
I always liked British 6-cylinder engines, typified by the Big Healey and the TR-6. They have a sound all their own – stately, refined, yet with that throaty rumble that indicates they are just loafing along but they’ll be there when you need ‘em…. The BMW 6-cylinder in my cousin’s 535i makes a similar sound but seems more in control – more efficient, cool, not quite as fun-loving, perhaps. And no gear whine in the Bimmer, either…..
Here is my little summary of the cars I heard –
Triumph TR6 - throaty ripping - Look out, here I come!
MGB - refined burble
Daimler SP250 ‘Dart’ - serious V8 burble but not American-V8-sounding
Austin Healey - 6-cylinder – throaty, low-pitched rumble
Jaguar - twin-cam 6 cylinder - low, expensive-sounding burble - a little louder when installed in an E-Type but still noticeable in late-model sedans
Aston Martin DB5 - smooth, refined rumble
MG T - rorty - whatever that means – but it describes the sound perfectly!
Mini (old) - high-pitched rasp
MINI (new) - hushed....
Triumph GT6 - smooth rasping
Sunbeam Tiger - American V8 rumble
Triumph TR3 - excited ripping
Any British car, parked – drip, drip, drip….
First off, let me state that although I am not a native New Jerseyian, in the 10 years I have lived here, I have come to tolerate it. (
The roads are not designed for cars in
Not a difficult concept to understand, and not a bad idea. The problem is that frequently, there are no jughandles and to turn left, you actually ‘turn left’! This maddening lack of consistency causes you to have to straddle several lanes of traffic as you approach an intersection, until it becomes clear where you must go – whether to dart right to use a jughandle or shoot left to get into a left-turn lane. This causes many two-lane roads to become one-lane roads as drivers straddle both lanes in an attempt to keep their options open. Of course, if by some chance you cannot dart over to the right to use the jughandle and decide, ‘No biggie, I’ll just take the jughandle at the next intersection’, well, of course, the next intersection will have a left-turn lane which you will miss because you’re in the right-hand lane (behind a straddler) so you can get into the jughandle which isn’t there…. This could continue until you reach
Of course, you won’t know that you’re in
Speaking of signs,
One of the major north-south roads in
It is apparently a statute that all new developments in
Have you ever gassed-up in
One of the most exciting aspects of driving in
1) Create need to change tire buy running over some metal shit in the
road on the way to the doctor's.
2) Look at tire, determine that chunk of rubber gouged out in sidewall
indeed indicates a tire change.
3) Go to doctor's appointment. Get a finger up your butt. Try not to
admit that it felt kind of okay.
4) Remove all implements from trunk - spare tire (full size, weighs
about 30 pounds and must be lifted up from housing using ONLY your
lower back muscles).
5) Stretch lower back and think about going back to doctor's office and
having him look at your back. But then you remember he only works lower
down and bag it. And you didn't REALLY enjoy it. Only a little...
6) Read instructions. None of the pictures match the wheels actually
installed on the car.
7) Remove decorative lug nut covers with special tool included in tool
kit.
8) Use screwdriver in tool kit to remove decorative lug nut covers as
the special tool isn't in there. Scratch rims while bending plastic
decorative lug nut covers and making them useless for the future.
Swear a bit. And sweat. Loosen lug nuts.
9) Jack up car using stupid scissors jack. Get grease on hands and
shirt.
10) Remove lug nuts. Find out that 'nuts' are actually 'bolts'.
11) Swear (and sweat) some more when tire will not come off hub.
Thinking that maybe something else is holding it on, use screwdriver
to remove center cap and render it also useless for future use. Nothing
else under there.
11) Kick tire around perimeter to try and loosen it. Watch while car
sways on stupid jack. Lower car until tire is just touching the ground,
kick it some more. Doesn't help but feels good until my toe starts hurting.
Think about going back into doctor's office. (No, really, I DIDN'T enjoy
it...)
12) When wheel comes off unexpectedly, make sure your foot is directly
underneath it so you prevent the 30 pound tire from being damaged by
hitting the ground. Swear (and sweat) some more. Hmmm, back to the
doctor's office? (Umm, no, not even a little bit...)
13) Balance tire with one hand while trying to line up lug bolt into a
hole you cannot see. Bolt goes in crooked and won't come out.
14) Repeat step 13 using a second and third bolt.
15) Get the fourth bolt to go in so you can now stop balancing the 30
pound wheel on the toes you earlier injured (see steps 11 and 12
above).
16) Restart the other bolts, which now slide in like they are greased.
17) Lower car, tighten lug bolts, throw all the crap haphazardly into
the trunk. Listen to jack rattle against some shit all the way home.
18) Be sure you clean off all of the dirt and grease from the steering
wheel and shift knob - and remember to put the gloves (that you took
out this past friggin' week-end to do some shit around the yard) back in
the trunk.
And under no circumstances should you call AAA for assistance. This is
the same as stopping to ask for directions when you're not-really lost.
