Antique & Classic Cars Blog

(Many of us classics fans find sustenance in the stories of old cars and quests to retrieve them. Below is the story of how I came to own the ’69 MGB GT described in various postings here. A version of this story first ran in Enjoying MG magazine, published in Britain. It’s long, so I’m not advocating that you read it at work unless you’re bored and your boss is cool.)

Marietta to Minneapolis by MGB GT

The British car bug is like the chicken pox. It’s better to get it young. That way, when you finally get the money to buy one, you’ll have some control over your passion. Experience and maturity will prevail and you’ll make only carefully reasoned automotive decisions. So says logic. Truth is, when you come face to grille with the British car of your dreams, logic goes right out the side vent. With distinctive lines, a bounty of gauges, wire wheels, and a Siren’s soft burble, what chance do you have? Save your negotiations for your spouse, over the garage space you’re about to commit for a lifetime.

The sports car bug first struck this enthusiast in 1979, at age 15. I emerged from the bout with a 1971 MG Midget. I had it 24 years. The fever set in again in 1982, the year an uncle willed me $2300. The very day the check arrived, there was treasure in the pages of the Philadelphia Bulletin: a ’72 Triumph TR6, in British Racing Green (Jade Green, originally—for the reader so steeped in lore as to know BRG is not a factory color in ’72). The car was as good as sold before I saw it in the paint. The price: $2300. My parents being on vacation at the time was just another act of providence. A few weeks later, I went off to college—which is where, they made quite clear, they had wanted that money to go.

For eleven years, the Triumph sat quietly in a Philadelphia garage, with occasional dusty jaunts around the block on holidays. In 1993, my wife and I decided to bring it to our home in Minneapolis. The family mechanic got it road-ready and it made the trip without incident. Only the speedometer cable failed, 100 miles from the Twin Cities. The TR then entered a restoration odyssey that included a garage gone bankrupt, the brief theft of the car, and an engine swap—the original six for a ’62 aluminum V8 and Triumph TR8 five-speed. That work is still in progress (and will be for decades if your source is my wife).

The Midget stayed in Philadelphia until my parents passed away, then I sold it to a friend’s kid a few blocks away in Minneapolis. I trailered it back and in just a few weeks he got it running, licensed and on the road. His father bought a Spitfire and their periodic visits in both cars were thoroughly contagious—borderline taunting.

I needed a British driver soon. More than soon. Right away.

Enter the B GT

Photo 1 from seller’s website.

Maggie came to me the way the best things often do—totally out of the blue. A one-page article in Classic and Sports Car described a family in England running an MGB GT as their daily driver. It hauls groceries, the couple’s two kids, and logs most of the family’s regular-duty miles. They love it. And it looks gooooood. The car is sporty, efficient, inexpensive to buy and repair (compare parts costs against German and Japanese cars), of practical dimensions, and striking from all angles.

Pic 2 from seller’s website.

A couple days hunting the classic car websites and I’d settled on a ’69. The chrome grille was a must (gone by’70), as were wire wheels, and I liked the small reflectors on the sides, front and rear, that only the ’69 seemed to have. After settling on a yellow one in California, which was sold when I called, I found a red one in Marietta, Georgia. A phone call, a few quick questions, one night to sleep on it, and the deposit was in the mail.

Seller’s third website photo.

I remembered all the classic-buying rule—“don’t buy the first one you see, talk to owners, join the clubs…”—and disregarded every one. My vision was blurry, my reasoning stuffed up. The British car bug had struck again. In the days between that fateful call and the flight to Georgia, I knew this was the best idea I’d had in a long, long time. I bought a one-way ticket to Atlanta: my ride home would be a 34-year-old British car.

Seller’s pics included the engine. Looked good to me.

The owner of a British garage was helping the owner with the sale. He picked me up at the Marietta bus station in an unrestored E-type—his daily driver. Good sign.

The B GT shared floor space with a dozen other Brits in various stages of repair and restoration. Some were better preserved, some more valuable, but they were toys for the most part—to be enjoyed as much from the outside as the driver’s seat. The MG coupe was something more. Only its design merged fun with more practical considerations, like a place to put things.

Yet this particular car faced expectations weeks–and sports car dreams decades–in the making. Under fierce examination, it wilted before the jury’s eyes.

The windshield was filthy and the whole car dusty. The driver’s headrest was in backwards and when I sat down the sagging headliner settled on my head. There were cobwebs with blades of suspended grass on the underside. And the body, beneath the dust, was not the rust-free car, with exceptions, that I had envisioned. The seller mentioned only two small spots of rust, beneath the trim strip on one side. On close inspection, there were bubbles all along the lower curve on both sides from the front to the rear wheel well.

In the dim light of the garage, dusty and sagging and dotted with rust bubbles, this was not the car of my dreams. It did not look like a vehicle that could be fired up and driven 1100 miles. In the fog of a sports car dream I had backed myself into a corner. This old MG was my only way out.

As I headed out for a walk and some quick thinking, the seller called out that the car’s owner would soon be there.

A Diamond in the Dust

Maggie had always been in the south, and for the last twenty years this man had done everything he could to keep the car running strong. It was regularly maintained, repainted once, the engine given a total rebuild, and he had redone the interior to try to keep it rip-free and comfortable.

His transformative powers were still strong. He had a shop employee wash the car, clean the windshield, blacken the tires. The sagging headliner was something he had installed years before and I removed it without damage to it or the original below. His daughter preferred the headrest backwards—perhaps she had a lot of hair. I reversed it in a minute or less.

Suddenly Maggie was a looker. And my plan was back in the brilliant lane. So the car had a little rust? The shop that did the metal and paint work on my TR6 would make it all go away. The panel gaps were good, everything opened and closed smoothly and it was arrow-straight—never been in a wreck despite its three-college tour of duty. The only noticeable flaw was that the car did not bear the original hood, or bonnet as the Brits say. Something—a truck backing up?—had put a little crease in the original grille and an equally slight bulge in the hood. The owner thought a steel one would take a deeper shine, so he replaced it. He was impressed that I knew the ’69s were the last to leave the factory with aluminum.

Since the car was again my ride home, and a sure restoration, originality was important—and nothing fits a car better than the panels the factory installed. “I still have it,” he said of the aluminum bonnet. He wanted me to take it with Maggie and hopefully reunite the two. Though the trip was a half-hour each way, he set off to retrieve it. The only question was, how would I get it home? Strapping it on top was out of the question: it would scrape and grind, then fly off. A mechanic and I measured Maggie’s bonnet and cargo space. Inconclusive.

Yet the winds of fate had shifted in my favor. The original bonnet slipped into the hatchback facing rearward and the hatch closed with a light click. I had to sit bolt upright and almost all the way forward, but for now that was fine. I felt like I just pulled a bank job and no one sounded the alarm. They wanted me to succeed, to escape the tinny, chrome-free world of plastic bumpers, hideous headlights and electronic overkill that shields the modern driver from the simple, mechanical elegance that defines the automobile.

I paid the asking price of $4,000 before turning the key. Following a quick test drive in rush-our traffic—on which I learned the meaning of “stand on the brakes”—I returned for handshakes and photos.

And with that, Maggie and I took off—seventy-three years between us, and eleven hundred miles to home.

A Simple Plan

To make the drive north interesting—and not tax the ol’ girl— I planned to take only surface roads, eat only at non-chain establishments and have a unique and enjoyable trip. A route called 41 tracked the interstate for as far ahead as I needed to think. It promised plenty of everything for food and services, and if the miles got too slow, the interstate was right there.

Not five miles from the seller’s garage, Fate displayed her fickle side. The brakes grabbed with a loud squeak and didn’t let go. The owner had mentioned this happened sometimes and he simply took them apart and reassembled to cure it. A roadside brake job was not in my playbook, however. I pulled into a parking lot, crawled under the back and tugged the parking brake linkage. This had worked on my Midget and it worked with its larger sibling. Back on the road and time to make time.

Traffic was thin and the air cool. Driver and car were pleased. Just as the last light of day was fading, I hit a long, narrow bridge spanning a wide point in the Tennessee River. There was no other car on the two-lane bridge that rose high above the black water. It felt like Maggie and I were crossing into a different world. Soon the road climbed the side of a hill with the lights along the river valley glimmering below.

I’d read that MGBs handle well and the rumors are true. With the thin wheel in my hands, a winding, rolling road pouring through the windshield above a cluster of black Smiths gauges, and the sweet burble of a British four singing in the air, this was why sports cars were made, and why fools like me live to drive them.

I passed a few hours like this until midnight rolled around and I ran out of gas. Not the car, me. I stopped at a Motel 6 that was all booked up. But the last reservation never showed up. When the front desk called him, he was asleep in another town. I had a room.

The following day I’d cover some serious miles.

From Nashville to Nashville

Over continental breakfast I talked with an amiable Brit traveling the Midwest by motorcycle. He’d done the same in Europe and Australia and had me wondering whether he was someone famous I didn’t recognize. As the writer of a column read by literally dozens of people every week, I decided not to pry (though I’d be delighted if someone asked me).

The plan to travel surface roads and really see the towns and states I passed through proved less rewarding than I’d hoped. The unique scenery and establishments didn’t seem to lie on the route I’d chosen. After stoplights and strip malls beyond counting, the interstate beckoned like a tropical beach in winter. The car had overdrive and it was running great. The interstate could only improve the journey.

False.

The B could handle highway speeds and the overdrive worked fine—early on. But on an uphill stretch, with swarming traffic, lots of construction, and concrete barriers funneling us into a narrow, rushing channel, something went wrong. I clicked off the overdrive for a little more torque. And the B choked. Switching back had no effect. The engine sputtered and the speedometer needle plummeted. With no warning from its tiny brake lights, the B slowed to a crawl at the feet of galloping semis, pickups and SUVs. The concrete barrier left no way out.

Feathering the pedal and hoping none of the behemoth pilots behind me was dialing a cell phone or setting the radio buttons, I got the B to an exit at the top of the hill. We limped off the interstate and found refuge beneath an overpass that was under construction. I popped the hood, opened both doors and sat down in the passenger seat with the atlas. We were safe. Now about that remaining 900 miles….

The leprechaun is an Irish creature, known to work its mischief. Perhaps gremlins were an early offshoot that migrated to England and took refuge in British cars. Any MG owner can relate a problem that showed up, stopped the car, and later disappeared without a trace. That’s the result I was counting on. I let the engine cool in the shade till it was no longer hot to the touch, and turned the key. The B fired without a miss. Engine temperature and oil pressure were fine, the idle smooth and quiet.

We returned to surface roads long enough to prove that whatever gremlin had tweaked a wire was gone, off in search of a Jaguar. I found the interstate, dipped onto the on-ramp and dropped the pedal. The little “four” pulled strong to highway speed. I let the engine sing above three grand until my last doubts vanished. I flicked the overdrive switch and an idiot light went on in my head. The car choked, sputtered and slowed to a creeping pace. Another rest in the shade and it fired up with the same false promises. Twice bitten, thrice got a clue.

This problem was no momentary fit. Hitting the overdrive had caused it, but turning it off did not drive it away. The overdrive unit was electrical and I reasoned the problem was too. But if it were just a faulty overdrive, why didn’t switching it off end the trouble? It had to be some other electrical fault. It couldn’t be the alternator because the battery would die once the alternator stopped charging it. Yet the B continued to fire strong after each rest.

My suspicions settled on the coil, which ramps up battery current to a much higher voltage to fire the spark plugs. The coil was failing and the extra draw of the overdrive was shutting it down. Yet after it cooled, it was strong enough to start and run the car as long as its demands were no greater. Seemed like a sound theory, but I wanted a mechanic’s confirmation. The nearest town was Hendersonville, Tennessee, ten miles east of Nashville.

I turned off the ramp onto a main thoroughfare and into a convenience store. The clerk said there were many garages ahead and a high school heartbreaker with a bare midriff confirmed this. She directed me to a garage her family used. They sent me to another, and that one to a third, and on to a fourth. Caught up in my classic car adventure, a 21st century reality had escaped me. How many MGs had I seen on the road? How many Triumphs? None. These cars have all but disappeared from the day-to-day world. So have the garages that fixed them. The young eyes that followed the B were not envious—they were curious. I felt like Marty McFly in reverse. I needed to get back to the past.

The fourth mechanic, a German named Uwe (oo-vay), knew my car. He’d worked on them long ago and listened carefully to my problem. He guessed an electrical or fuel problem but that’s all he had to offer. He had no parts for the car and no interest in tearing into it. All he could do was send me to a fifth garage, with the word “European” in the name.

As I pulled in front of its open bays I saw only modern BMWs and Saabs. The desk man confirmed they didn’t work on old Brits, but I pressed him. “There was a place,” he said, “in Nashville. I don’t know if they’re still around.” I wanted more, so I didn’t move. “Hold on a second,” he said. He dialed some friend, another victim of the British car bug, and got a name and number—J.D.’s British Cars. He scratched it on a pad and tore off the page. I put it in my pocket. There was a Napa next door and I was thinking about that coil.

Instead of laughing, the guy at Napa said, “yes.” He did have a coil for a 1969 MGB GT. Driving British cars has a way of making one believe in destiny, if not the supernatural. The garage odyssey was more like an Iliad and an Odyssey combined, with a Minotaur and Middle Earth thrown in. If this store had the part I was seeking, that had to be the problem. I bought it and the tools to install it and sweated in the parking lot till the job was done. The car started with more power than ever.

An hour and a lunch later, I was back on the shoulder. Accelerating to highway speed Maggie had gagged again. And this time she wasn’t coming back. I hadn’t touched the overdrive and the coil was new. My backup theory was the fuel pump or a blocked fuel line but it didn’t matter if I was right. Napa didn’t have one and I had no other candidates. Nor did I have a good spot, the tools, or the daylight to attack the fuel system.

I rummaged through my pocket and extracted the number for J.D.’s British Cars. I dialed and the line connected: not a pizza place, barber shop, private residence or “not in service” recording. A voice said, “J.D.’s British Cars.” I explained my predicament, he recited a towing service number, and soon I was sitting in the cab of a truck heading to Nashville. Maggie rolled behind on her front wheels.

J.D. greeted me, put the car in the garage and let me snoop around while he took a preliminary look at it. His space was an old warehouse, with Bentleys, Jaguars, a Lotus Europa and other worthy vehicles scattered about.

J.D. even had a Dodge A100 truck (a funky cab-forward pickup) with big block he was fixing up as the company wagon. The A100’s on my project list if my cash and storage limitations should one day disappear. He slid a phonebook across the desk and shortly I was walking to my hotel. A nearby Mexican restaurant served up some decent enchiladas and a beer, and I turned in early.

J.D.’s mechanics dug into my car first thing in the morning. It was ready before noon. Reaching into the air for a figure I hoped the repair fell below, I grabbed seven-fifty. It was $560. He cleared out the fuel system, replaced the fuel pump, cleaned and balanced the carbs and then timed the engine. He took the wheel and we stormed the highway for a brief check. Car ran like a watch, overdrive included.

I hit the highway with new resolve. The sky was clear, traffic moderate, the car was running perfectly and I was rested. I set no night’s destination; I just wanted to shift a big bunch of miles from the windshield to the rearview mirror.

As the B pulled me farther and farther north, the idea of parking in front of my house, climbing out of that vertical seat and doing a lot of not driving became increasingly appealing. I memorized the series of roads between Paducah, Kentucky, and Iowa’s border with Minnesota. From there I didn’t need a map.

Night set in, the air grew cool, and timeless darkness enveloped us. A ’68 Camaro Pace Car passed me and for a moment it was easy to imagine I was a kid again, running home from a friend’s or girlfriend’s in my ’71 Midget. Maggie was bigger, snugger and more powerful, and we were both older. The future was uncertain then, both mine and the car’s. But now things were more defined, and in that sense better. I would return to my own house and wife and work and Maggie would settle in for a long, long time.

As I crossed into Iowa, Fate decided some rain would keep things interesting. I had no idea if the wipers worked or if the blades would improve or degrade visibility.

A snap of the switch sent them chugging back and forth across the glass, which they cleared pretty well. I congratulated myself on choosing a coupe. Until I felt a drip on my right leg. Another fell, and then another, and then a second leak developed over my left leg. I’ve had no problems with Smiths gauges, but I’m pretty sure you shouldn’t run water through them. I whipped into a gas station, got some duct tape and plastic bags and sealed off the scuttle vent between the hood and windshield.

The dripping resumed as soon as I got back on the highway. Rain would run through the dash whether the car was sitting or moving, so I kept going, hoping the trip would not end in a roadside fire.

The station in Decorah, Iowa, had no awning, but it did have donuts and a flashlight. Lying, legs out the door on the driver’s side floor, I could sort of see where the water was coming from. The seals at the base of the wiper arms had disintegrated sending rain through the very device designed to clear it away. Two more pieces of duct tape stemmed the flow. If it couldn’t plague my car, the rain would only saturate the farmer’s dried-out fields. Beaten, Fate cleared the sky.

Minneapolis rose above the plains and got bigger and bigger until familiar turns beckoned. I pulled up to the house at eleven a.m. and carried in my bag and the aluminum hood. No further sleep necessary.

That evening, my wife and I took Maggie to the grocery store and lined up the bags in the back window. She likes the car and it’s a perfect ride for the two of us. Since its arrival it’s performed without a hint of trouble. The tree-lined streets and leisurely, lakeside drives are perfect for a classic sports car. In the spring, I’ll take it to my body and paint man and have him fix the rust and respray it in a factory red.

We’re a two British-car family now, a roadster and a coupe. And all is right with the world.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 20th, 2007 at 12:32 pm and is filed under Car parts, Car stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.