About two years ago I convinced myself that "we" needed a second car. "We" didn't: "I" sort of did on the grounds that there are those days when cycling to work wasn't really an option (if it's raining heavily, if I need to wear a suit - yes I have several - etc.). However, when I inquired as to the cost of insuring and taxing even a modest second car, the insurance premium knocked the idea on the head. Even the best quotes were hilariously expensive: I haven't been able to fathom why this should be so. Logically even I can only drive one car at a time so it's not like the risk doubles (as the premium did).
However, at this point, I met a former neighbour who'd always been into older cars. He intimated that there was something called classic car insurance for vehicles aged 30 years or more. I did some research and found that not only was classic insurance a fraction (well a quarter) of the other quotes I'd received but that road tax was neglibly low - 40 euro regardless of engine size. Oh, and the cars were NCT-exempt (again the logic escapes me.)
Hence my eyes turned to three-decade old cars. For some reason I immediately came to rest on an MG. MG (Morris Garages) has been through a variety of guises in its 82-year history (the company was founded as a garage rather than a manufacturer in 1921). Between 1980 and 1995 the company was effectively mothballed, ceasing production entirely for 12 of those 15 years. Today it only produces one model - the MGF although it also upgrades and rebadges cars produced by the Rover Group, transforming Rover's 25, 45 and 75 series into MG ZRs, ZSs and ZTs.
However, between 1962 and 1980 the flagship model of the company was the MGB, a two-seater "roadster" (i.e. open-topped) sports car. In 1965 the company introduced a Hard-Top hatch-backed version of the car, called the MGB-GT. The official company website refers to the GT as the "poor man's Aston Martin", as in the version driven by Sean Connery in Goldfinger - the DB5. Even as an MG owner I can see this is overstating the car's presence.
I was initially interested in the little brother of the MGB, - the Midget, a roadster of diminutive proportions and priced a few on UK-based websites. However I then rang a man called Terry Mullally who runs an MG garage off Haddington Road. I was mainly trying to establish if he'd look after any car I bought but he ended up convincing me that a Midget wasn't a good idea if I was planning to go on longer drives (which I found myself suggesting I was). "Go with an MGB", he averred. Grand, back to the websites with me. I figured I could spend about £5,000 sterling (or 8,000euro at the time). Saw a few I liked then realised that in fact I had no idea what driving one of these things was like. Suppose I hated it? I called Terry again: could I come over and try one out? That was fine so over I popped.
When I arrived, he asked me for a profile of the car I was looking for: an MGB soft-top, 30 years or older, in fair to reasonable nick. Terry gestured at a dusty vehicle in the corner: "well that's for sale and it turns 30 this year)." Thus it was that in October 2002 I purchased a somewhat disheveled but fundamentally sound white 1972 MGB with a view to getting it on the road by Christmas that year. And herein lay the first lesson: restoring cars will always take longer than you think it will. In fact it was April 2003 before the car was ready to hit the road.
In the meantime it had been reduced to this state:
Basically everything was stripped off the body (grille, bumpers, lights, mirrors, the roof, the roof frame, even the doors) and replaced with new parts. At the same time every piece of interior trim (including the seats and dash board) was ripped out and discarded. In effect the car was reduced to an engine, wheels and a body shell.
From here the car was resprayed (Brooklands Green), the new parts installed and new roof and frame attached. The devil lay in the details: you'd get the door in place only to discover that key bolt was missing and would have to ordered along with multifarious other bits and bobs from Brooklands, an MG parts supplier in Belfast. Eventually something was being couriered down on a more or less daily basis and Brooklands got tired of ringing me to okay credit card payments: I sort of gave them carte blanche to put stuff on the card. And the cost did mount. By the time I took delivery of the completed vehicle, the original budget was in tatters although the fact that I'd been able to pay for stuff over a period of about eight months made it easier to deal with.
However my relationship with Brooklands points to one of the positive things about MGBs. Although the last one rolled off the assembly line in 1980 you can still buy virtually every spare part new. In fact you could theoretically build a "brand new" 1970 car. Worse still for purists you can buy equipment that hadn't even been conceived of in 1970 and install it into/onto your vehicle - keyless locks, power steering, etc.
When I first bought the car I had wondered whether buying a car only a year younger than myself was a good idea: the answer turns out to be emphatically affirmative. Although there was an initial teething period - the car kept conking out due to a carburettor issue and the starter had to be reconditioned - it has subsequently proved fairly reliable. It does guzzle fuel but then I don't really drive it that much (although I try and give it a ten-minute warm-up drive every day).
The actual experience of driving, however, is easily the most fun I've ever had behind a car wheel. The 1.8lt four cylinder engine is big relative to the size of the car and as a result, even after 31 years, it's wonderfully responsive. The mind boggles at how it must have felt to drive it when the engine was brand new.
Basically it's not like driving a modern car - there's no power steering so you have to wrestle with the wheel a bit. It's a rear-wheel drive which makes going round sharp corners an artform. There are four or five dials on the dash boards which demand fairly regular monitoring to allow you to make minute adjustments. It's also a five-speed car with a four-speed gearbox: MG didn't make five speed transmissions in 1972, but clearly felt that if they were making sports car hen they should be making cars with five forward gears. The solution? They stuck a switch marked (and I must admit to loving this) "overdrive" on the dashboard. Basically once you reach 45 mph, you flick this and the gears automatically (i.e. without your moving the clutch or gearstick) move from fourth into fifth. Do I feel like Sean Connery nudging the ejector button when I do this? Sometimes, yes.
Also other people seem to like it too. Basically the MG bears none of the threat of a heavily modified Opel Corsa nor does it carry the whiff of arrogance that a brand-new Mercedes SLK implies (with apologies to drivers of both). And although such things are clearly subjective, I think it looks great: the round headlights, the curves over the bonnet and boot, the semi-muscular profile. Few modern cars match its aesthetics. (To illustrate my obsession: I recently brought the car down to a friend's house in Leitrim. This is a retreat for his extended family and looks like something out of MTV's "Cribs", inside and out. On the afternoon we were leaving a bunch of us - male and female - spent three hours in deckchairs just looking at the car parked on the gravel driveway.)
Oh and did I mention?: the roof folds down and you get to drive in the open-air, which this summer (2003) at least has proved possible more often than I'd hoped for.