Louis Shalako: Classics: Buying MGB (or other) Sports Cars, Part Three. Louis Shalako.

Triumph Spitfire. Sven Homberg.

Louis Shalako

Okay. I have been researching British sports cars from the past, and I have found a very small number of Triumph Spitfires in Ontario. Kijiji is a free online ad service. There are other websites, some of those cars go for a lot more money. Arguably, some of those guys know what they're doing. For a car of this type, $8,200.00 seems a reasonable asking price, so-called haggle or wiggle-room, is actually a wider split than some much more modern used car, one that is intended to be a daily driver. My point here is that it is not really practical transportation, and you have the option of low-balling an offer and if it is not accepted, then just walking away.

The seller has the option of saying no way, Jose.

That seems fair enough.

I can't even say these cars are rare, (they shouldn’t be), but it's possible that people are just hanging onto them. I can't even drive a Spitfire, I can push in the clutch, but when I go to let it up, my knee hits the bottom of the dashboard...there is not enough space to slide the left foot down beside the clutch. In other words, a very small car, even for the time and place. This is the best of maybe three vehicles, (I found 31 results for MGB recently), and the sort of average price makes fixing up a project car kind of a lose-lose situation, in terms of the money. I've always liked the front end that tips forwards, exposing the working guts of the vehicle, and of course, the GT-6, a two-litre, straight six coupe version is one of the most attractive small car designs of all time. How do we price such vehicles? The online Kelly Blue Book sort of websites only seem to go back to the year 2000. There must be other websites for the serious buyer or collector.

The M.G. Midget is also inaccessible to me, it’s simply too small in the cockpit for me to drive it.

It's all wonderfully accessible...$8,200.00.

I believe the 1975 Spitfire has the longer trailing arms on the independent rear suspension, and that it cornered at an impressive 0.87 on the skid-pad. I get this sort of info from the Wiki articles and other sources listed below.

In a previous blog post, I mentioned a red Spitfire with a Chrysler alternator. Fuck, I’m looking at photos online, but with this one, I really have to wonder.

Is that you, Dave…???

I’m just going on memory here, but the Spitfire had a very tight turning circle, the steering wheel taking 2.3 turns, lock-to-lock, and nothing much under the fenders to obstruct the cranking of the wheels. Visually, you can see the attraction of lifting that front end and there it is, all accessible. The GT-6 has been called the poor man's E-Type for just this reason.

If you can’t see that, this might not be the collectible car for you…

In the photo, the left front tire is wearing on the inner area, probably an issue of alignment, you may want to replace the tie-rod ends. Yet the overall package seems good, and the very small number of available vehicles sort of answers the question for itself. It’s going to cost you money—how badly do you want to do this, sort of thing.

The radiator has an overfill tank on this model, and the windshield washer bottle is up by the firewall. It helps to know what you’re looking at, rather than driving all over the place, doing the research first-person. I am, quite frankly, educating myself, before even picking up the phone and talking to a real, live person with a car to be sold.

This example is at least worth having.

I’m time-tripping again. I agree, a mechanic who cannot plug into the diagnostics would have to have some direct knowledge and experience. In this town, that would be a rarity. Larger cities in Canada still probably do have their very professional, enthusiast-mechanics. I may be the most qualified guy in Sarnia, population 72,000. Don’t get me wrong: there are Porsche and BMW mechanics in this town. They’re working on fairly new vehicles and have all the dealership and factory support they can handle. If you brought them a 356, they could fix it, and they could probably fix an M.G. as well. This would be at the prevailing shop rates. There are jobs you don't want to do yourself, that's especially true of rolling around in the driveway, in winter, or rain, or heat, and trying to fix something that's better left to the pros.

The black ’78 MGB pictured has over 102,000 k, according to the ad, although that is more probably miles.

I’ve seen some interesting cars just rotting into the ground, with trees growing up through the floor and what’s left of the roof. The only thing there is the castings, perhaps the glass, a few fittings, instruments perhaps. Yet you can buy rebuilt and new parts from any number of U.K. and U.S. suppliers. Obsolete Automotive is right here in town.

With this company, I reckon it’s mostly online sales, mail order, and stuff like that. The amount of walk-in traffic would be minimal.

Open up the doors, and you see why the sills and the transmission tunnel are so important structurally.

Nice. I know I can take the thing apart and put it back together again. The real problem in Canada is corrosion, and some projects just aren’t worth starting. You have to know when: that is a parts car and the rest is scrap metal.

(See previous blog post. - ed.)

Yeah, people pay to import Carolina or ‘southern’ cars. The red MGB locally, purports to be just such a car. Price: $12,000.00. Sounds good, but not exactly a money-making proposition.

Nowadays there are all sorts of tutorials on Youtube. That being said, I’d just pull the motor and take it to a professional machine shop or ship it in a crate to someone with a good reputation. All it takes is cold, hard cash…

…This is the straight dope: when I go off of disability, I will get a raise of $300-400.00 per month. The average new car these days is $66,000.00 here in Canada. Ten or twelve grand for a good B almost seems reasonable. The thing is, to have that daily driver. The M.G. is more for pleasure.

$8,100.00.

Behind our shop in the wilds of Plympton-Wyoming. There are fourteen storage units, last I heard, the rate was $180.00/month. The doors are at least ten feet wide, and the units at least fourteen feet long, just going on eyeball and instinct. A hundred-foot extension cord. A couple of work lights on poles. A bench across the back, a few tools, a good manual, and I could work on an MGB. I could build a low ramp and get her a foot or so up off the ground...you can buy cheap metal ramps for oil changes, just for example. If I was going to drive the B for the summer, I could leave the minivan outside, clean up the unit and I would not have to pay the monthly fee...right. If one must have some kind of a crazy dream, we might as well go into some detail. And if the opportunity should arise, we now have some semblance of a plan.

If I had any brains at all, I’d make myself some kind of authority on the subject, and then write a really helpful and entertaining book about it.

The price on the black ’78 has been reduced, from just under ten thou to $8,100.00. Okay, the later models have many knocks against them. But in terms of this marketplace, a clean body shell is everything. With a good monocoque, good steel in all the right places, everything else is possible.

All it takes is money, time and a good dose of passion.

The bodywork on this machine looks fair in the pictures, bearing in mind the age of the vehicle, Canadian winters; road salt, and simply being left outdoors. I’ve always wondered what Jay Leno had against rain. Jay has cars worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. As for myself, I hate to see any interesting vehicle parked in the long, wet grass for any period of time. They deteriorate so much more quickly. That includes relative cheapies such as the MGB or Triumph Spitfire.

I could have work space for a price...

…This vehicle is 46 years old. The basic engine is the same as earlier models, it has been detuned and pollution-controlled. This is one of several knocks, considering an 18-second 0-60 time.

(Link will become dead when it sells.)

…Looking into the engine bay, we can see an overflow tank on the aluminum radiator, the old Tudor drink-bottle style washer fluid bottle has been replaced with a larger unit. This is a single-barrel Zenith-Stromberg carburetor, the rectangular thing on top is the air cleaner, and we can still see the old EVAP cartridge thingy behind the washer bottle.

The brake and clutch master cylinders appear to be newer, much larger units. The exhaust manifold is unchanged, and that is a stock M.G. alternator of 35 amps. I’m thinking the old, copper radiators had the hose going to the thermostat housing from the other side, in my recollection. If you look closely, you will see the hot water valve on the side of the engine and the upside-down oil filter cartridge.

I would think that before tearing a bunch of stuff off of this engine and trying to convert it to a previous spec, (thereby gaining thirty or so horsepower), you have to be familiar to the type that you are building it to, if you take my meaning.

The author is relying on limited knowledge and a lot of memories. Mistakes of a technical nature in the text are his responsibility and his alone.

END