Missed Connections

Hey, You!  Yeah, you, the guy in the MGB GT cruising down Park Avenue about 11:30 this morning!  I wanted to talk to you.  I had a story for you.

You pulled a U-turn without warning into the curbside spot outside Panera Bread, and, by the time I took a left and tried to find a way around the block in that labyrinthine mess that is the Renton Landing, you had already bought a sandwich and left.

I wanted to tell you about my friend, who had accumulated over the years a 1976 MGB, along with the usual pile of parts, spares and stuff that accumulates around British sports cars.  Any old sports car, especially the British ones, brings with it a shared responsibility to keep it up and running like any old classic automobile.  The common problems with SU carburetors, electric overdrive transmissions, Lucas Prince of Darkness wiring systems and the overcomplicated way British engineers liked to do things also pushes the owners into groups of like-minded individuals commiserating and kvetching and sharing parts and know-how, which is why I figured if you didn’t want a look at this pile, you might know someone who would.

I wanted to tell you how I went out there last week and wandered around the back yard and in the shop, and gazed at the piles of bodies and fenders and wheels and tires, and how there was part of an old horse trailer out there, inside of which were drivelines and grilles and bumpers and seats and tops and door panels and this and that kind of related stuff.  How in the shop there was more interesting stuff, including some engines under the bench, and a stack of transmissions, with rear ends out in the yard.

I could have told you that most of the pile appeared to be MG stuff, but there was some Triumph goodies in there, too, and even some Chevrolet stuff in the pile, the surface of which was all I saw, the rest being buried under stuff.

I wanted to say that the car has a title, but has not been licensed since 1998, and somewhere along the line someone replaced the power train with a Nissan engine and a five-speed transmission, which probably would be considered an upgrade among all but the most diehard aficionados of the marque.

I could have told you that all she wants is for everything to go away, including the horse trailer itself and all the junk tires, and that a guy could probably get the whole pile including the car for a very nominal sum and a crew to come out and turn that part of the back yard back into something you can mow.

I was gonna tell you that I have pictures, if you were interested.

But none of that is going to happen.  You got away.  Now you’ll never know how close you came to a score.  Maybe you should be relieved.  Maybe not.  Maybe next time.  Drive careful in that old beauty.  There’s only so many of them left out there.  Next one I see, I’ve got a story for them.  :-{)}