Antique & Classic Cars Blog

If the falling leaves and chilly nights have you lamenting another classic-car season gone, maybe a winter tinkering project would ease the frost-bitten blues. A car I always thought excellent as a starter project–when you don’t have a wheelbarrow full of cash and unlimited covered space–is the MG Midget. For good looks, low cost, mechanical simplicity and modest garage-space requirements, it’s hard to top. They’ll even accommodate fairly long legs but not people with a linebacker build.

Midgets are plentiful, parts are easy to come by (from Moss, Victoria British, eBay, Roadster Factory), the Haynes manual will walk you through most any repair, and they even move pretty well because of their light weight. My friend Tom Cotter, whose interview appears below, even races one in vintage events and has a blast (though you’ll pay real money to build a race engine).

If you’ve often thought about fixing up an old car but have been afraid to take the plunge, something cheap and simple like a Midget is a pretty good test case to see if you like it. They’re not great candidates for concours restorations because their value has not risen like most of their contemporaries’, but that’s what makes them good starter projects. Finding a complete, non-rusty one with an engine that runs or at least turns over, is a solid starting point. I like the chrome bumper cars with the 1275 cc engine, say from ‘69 to ‘73. Common repairs include brake master cylinder, wheel cylinders, fuel pump, lever-arm shocks, gas tanks rust out, there’s always a few bad connections to sort, the handbrake may be frozen, carbs gummed up, water pump, thermostat, exhaust system, etc.–all simple yet satisfying repairs for winter evenings and weekends.

Look around a while and you should be able to find a good project for under two grand.

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 14th, 2007 at 3:38 pm and is filed under Car parts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.