Antique & Classic Cars Blog
Long Hidden Northern Coupe Emerges
Friday, September 26th, 2008Top-secret technology hidden in ancient catacombs a mile below the paper’s downtown offices tracks hits on its blog websites. From this revolutionary tech (widely available and not secretive) we know lots of people pass by here—and many of you have neat cars.
Tom P., our neighbor to the north in Ottawa, read the story of this blogger’s acquiring a 1969 MGB GT from Marietta, Georgia. He has accepted our longstanding offer to show readers’ cars and share your stories with fellow blog visitors.
The original owner of this B bought it for $2995 in 1969—Tom has that receipt. As often happens, that owner and his wife had a child and wanted a bigger car. Tom is enthusiastic enough about the car that he phoned the original owner’s home. The first owner is now 83 and his wife, who answered the phone, said he would be glad to hear the car was still driven and appreciated.
It went to a colleague of Tom’s in ’71 for $1800 and shortly, as also often happens, ended up in storage. When the colleague retired, he woke the MG from its 25-plus-year slumber, put it back on the road and then bought a ’64 Mark II Jaguar. The B GT became surplus to need and space and Tom picked it up with only 41,500 miles on the clock—now about 42,700.
Great looking car. Thanks to Tom for sharing it (and to its previous owners for keeping this little gem safe and sound for so many years).
8 Responses to "Long Hidden Northern Coupe Emerges"
I have been a sports-car fan since my childhood. Over the years, I have owned a bug-eyed Sprite; a Fiat 850 Spider Coupe, and currently own a 1995 BMW M3. My other sports-car-related experiences include (MANY years ago) rides in an MGB TD, MGA, Austin Healy 3000, and a Lotus Super 7. Also: I once flagged an SCCA National. Finally, I once touched (amazingly even at the time [early 1980s]) a Shelby-AC 427 Cobra out on the street! It was beautiful. The point of all this? I just want to thank you for the article on the MGB-GT. It is a car I always LOVED, both for its looks, and it’s heritage. It (the MGB GT) and the Lotus Elan, the Triumph TR-7, and the unruly-but-powerful Sunbeam Tiger are all on this dream list of cars I wish I could have owned (and COULD have afforded at the time.) So, thank you very much for yhe great article!!!
P.S. I live in the aforementioned Marietta, GA with my M3. Pictures at: http://www.n4xy.com/family_bmw.html
Thanks Ed and nice to hear from you. I bought the Marietta B GT through a British car specialist named Richard Gossett, nice guy with a wonderful assortment of 4-wheeled eye candy at his shop, including his unrestored 4.2 E-type coupe.
M3s are nice. Have a friend with one here and I love the engine note. Not all modern engines sound great to me, the way an Offy or a 327 Chevy sounds at full lurch, but the M3 has it right.
Cool you’ve seen a real 427. I’ve just finished writing a book on unrestored cars, due out for the holidays…
http://www.amazon.com/Survivor-Unrestored-Collector-Kris-Palmer/dp/0981727018/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1222540477&sr=8-3
(Says “paperback” but it’s hard copy.)
…and I’ve got a ‘67 427 Cobra in there painted new by George Barris. Shelby put 428s in about 100 of the cars and when people complained all but about a dozen were swapped back. This car still has the 428 police interceptor, even though it was badged and sold a 427.
What a wonderful car and story! I am in the process of reassembling a 67 MGB GT Special. An original basketcase. So to have such a beauty as a low mileage creampuff. Wow!
Very nice. Can you share a bit more about the car? Have you got all the pieces? Engine turn over?
What color is/was it and maybe you could inform readers what “Special” denotes in the name….
Thanks for your post. Kris
I would be happy to share more about the car. A GT Special was a marketing movement by MG in the US to sell more cars. It took the standard MG GT and added options to make it the Special. More can be learned at: http://www.mgcars.org.uk/namgbr/67gt-spec.htm. The cars all have a little plaque declaring them to be a Special. You will see a few at the larger gatherings of MG aficionados. I read somewhere that somewhere around a 1,000 were built and sold.
I got the car around 8 years ago in pretty rough shape. The floor boards were rotted through; the aluminum hood was dented and the sills were rotted out as well. But it was complete. I had a rebuilt overdrive transmission put in and the rolling chassis taken over to a body shop that has experience with rebuilding MG sills and floorboards. MG sills come in 14 separate pieces and putting them together and keeping the car straight is a skill. Along with this effort, the car was stripped and re-sprayed in the original BRG.
It returned to me the day my wife and I were moving to Atlanta. It was the last item to be loaded on to the moving van. Right behind our 1980 Roadster. Three years later we returned with little work having been done to reassemble the car. It was started on a regular basis and sat covered in a garage. On our return I stored it with Mark Brandow of Quality Coaches. Most recently he has moved it to the “showroom” floor at Quality Coaches, but only after I vowed to work on it. So I am starting with the reinstalling of the windows and the door bright work. Of course it means finding replacement windows since the originals have seen much better days and more light through them as well (they are irretrievably scratched).
So it begins. It may take a while but there is always a knowledgeable person and a source of British bits at Quality Coaches. So depending on time and budget it should be rolling in a while.
I’ve seen that car! I was over at Quality for a knock-off wrench for my wire wheels (had one but haven’t seen it since the car was painted).
I commented to Mark that the green BGT in the front room looked nice.
Sounds like you’ve done a lot of work on it–should be great to drive next summer, eh?
As they say, “Poco y poco..” I hope to have it drivable by next summer. My long suffering wife would appreciate it. I promised that it could be her summer “driver.”
It will be nice for that. Once you go through an MG and clear rust from the fuel, brake and cooling systems, get the ignition set up right with fresh plugs, points, wires, cap, etc., and go through the wiring (mine’s a little switched around right now after an engine-bay respray), they run fine in modern traffic and they sound and look great.
I get a lot of looks and smiles–though it’s a sign we’re far from the 1980s that many of the commentors ask, “What is that?”
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MotorMouth Kris Palmer, freelance auto writer and editor, blogs about vintage cars, the collectible auto scene and just about anything else that goes vroom.
Your favorite: classic car blog, antique car blog, muscle car blog, vintage car blog. Antique and classic cars for sale by owner.
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