MGB GT
The opportunity arose to secure a rather tasty looking sports car, an MGB GT 1.8 litre in red, with wire wheels. To a young lad this was more like it. So this car was my 2nd Car, this time purchased using my own funds. The car came up for sale via a work colleague of my Dad. A quick test drive & I was sold on the sporty exhaust note, the low seating position & leather steering wheel. It did made a great sound, when in reality it wasn’t really a performance car. Those knock on knock off wire wheels did look so good though as well as all the chrome plated bumpers & trim pieces.
I found out later on that the managing director of the firm I was working for at the time also had his eye on this sports car but myself & my Dad’s swift moves bought the car from under his nose.
Interestingly this chap would pass me almost every day on the Motorway, commuting to work in his brand new Rover 3.5 litre V8 Vitesse, a sort of top of the range popular executive company car, at the time. Racing the MD probably wouldn’t have been a good idea.
With this car I soon picked up some early skills in maintaining & keeping running such a car. There was always some work to carry out on the MGB. The exhaust was particularly low (very!) to the road & I was forever knocking the middle silencer off, which resulted in a very load exhaust note, albeit quite a nice racing car like sound – to a young lad.
I once had an oil cooler leak which proceeded to trail a lovely line of black oil for several miles. To this day the black lines can still be seen on the road! Yep my early cars leaked oil & just like this one had rusting bodywork on show & hidden in the structural members out of sight.
I soon learnt to carry a toolbox full of appropriate spanners etc – actually I carried a full complement of all my tools – taking up all the space under the rear hatch. I had acquired a brand new metal clad cabinet to keep my tools in from work – it had a slight manufacturing error, so was effectively scrap to my company. One day I had to provide an update on the status of a new design & had to go directly to the Managing Director’s office, quite daunting for my 1st job in engineering. The MD thanked me for the update & then asked how was the MGB & commented on the new toolbox in the back of my car – on full show for anyone to see. I think that was a bit of payback from my MD, anyways I always drove the MGB with its oversize toolbox in the back of the car.
I did enjoy my introduction to a sports car with my MGB, looking back it was never a great handling car but it did have bags of character & for a mass produced sports car it certainly delivered lots of fun motoring to a young lad. This car is still registered to this day & it is now a Green colour.
I always fancied the MGC & MGB GT V8 variants but all the cars I looked at had way more rust than my car & were at a time in their lives when full restorations or the scrap yard were the only realistic options for these cars.
