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Even though the black-bumper Midget was a cruel parody of the ridiculously fun pre-Malaise version, it's still saddening to see one among all the Hyundai Excels and Geo Prizms in my local self-service wrecking yard. This one has the dusty, bleached look of a car that spent a decade or three rotting in a back yard prior to its final ride behind a tow truck. Look at all those good parts! Doesn't anyone want Midget parts these days? galleryPost('Junk75Midget', 6, '1975 MG Midget Down On The Junkyard');
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This is Down On The Street Bonus Edition , where we check out interesting street-parked cars located in places other than the Island That Rust Forgot . After the Shark and Minnow Midget/Continental combo, it only seemed right to share some photos of another street-parked Midget (ideally, one not overshadowed by some monster land yacht), and Kitt has shot such a car for us in her South Denver neighborhood. This one's for sale, and instead of a price it's got a printout of the NADA Guides retail value; hey, it's worth a try! I've done a fair amount of Midget driving, and they're a lot of fun… provided you carry every tool you own in the boot- you'll need 'em, thanks to the one-two punch of Lucas Electrics and SU carbs- and don't mind the disconcerting experience of viewing the undersides of truck trailers on the freeway. galleryPost('DOTSBEDenverMidget', 6, '1973 MG Midget Down On The Denver Street'); DOTS FAQ
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Welcome to Project Car Hell , where you choose your eternity by selecting the project that's the coolest... and the most hellish! Last time we simultaneously crushed and seared our fingers in the red-hot vise of the Hell Garage, the Shelby-ized Dodge Omni beat hell out of the Shelby-ized Dodge Shadow in the poll. Today, with the New England 24 Hours of LeMons race coming up in just a few days, we're thinking about the kind of car it takes to win the most prestigious trophy of the event. No, that's not the one that goes to the so-called "overall winner" (although a team does get some heavy-duty bragging rights by taking that honor ). We're talking about the coveted Index Of Effluency trophy, the one given to the team that achieves beyond all reasonable expectation in a seemingly hopeless "race car." You contend for the IOE by showing up in a looks-fast-on-paper car that everyone knows is going to blow up for sure (e.g., Maserati Biturbo, Merkur XR4Ti,...
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Many, many cars have passed through my hands since I first picked up a '69 Toyota Corona for 50 bucks , but only a few really make me feel a twinge of regret when I think about letting them go. One such car is the British Racing Green '73 MGB-GT I owned for a few years in my early 20s; it was slow, handled like a garbage truck, went through $40 carburetor floats like other cars go through oil changes, and proved that all those Joe Lucas jokes are based on painful reality... but I still loved it. Perhaps this is the evil lure of the British Car, but I was finally able to heed the rule posted on a huge sign at the only British-car wrecking yard in Northern California: IF IT RUNS, SELL IT. This beat-to-hell MGB-GT, which could be a '71, '72, or '73, might be my old car , after a couple of decades of neglect. Sure, mine was pretty nice when I sold it, but a lot can happen in 20 years! I spotted this B parked while going out to dinner a few weeks back (on the same commercial...
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Not a whole lot of old British cars remain on the streets of Alameda. We've seen a few Morrises and a couple of Jaguars , but just a single MG up until today. I found this '73 MGB parked just a few doors down from the '68 Pontiac GTO and ran right home to get my camera, in case it was about to drive away any minute. As it turned out, this MG is a new resident, not a onetime visitor. 1973 was the last year of the small chrome bumpers for US-market MGBs, with monstrous Malaise units adding approximately five tons of ugly to the later car. The Malaise Era got an early start on the MGB's engine for '73, though, with a Yugo-like 79 horsepower on tap from the venerable BMC B engine (yes, the US-spec Yugo boasted- if that's the word- only 68 horsepower, but those extra 11 horses probably don't give the British Leyland product much of a performance advantage over the Zastava machine). Still, I used a '73 MGB-GT as a daily driver for a few years, and it felt quick...
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Anyone who thinks the B doesn't belong in this series, consider this fact: the Hindustan Motors Ambassador , perhaps the world's most workhorsey car since the Model T, was powered by the BMC B until the early 90s. Starting in 1954, if it was British and had wheels you'd have a good chance of seeing this engine when you popped the bonnet. Why, even the Nash Metropolitan had B power! Once they went to a five-bearing crank, the B was actually much more dependable than most of the cars it powered. We say it's a workhorse! [Wikipedia]
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