History
I picked up my MGB on July 3rd 1980. Appropriately the next day was “Independence Day”. I was finally independent from the restrictions of borrowing my parents’ car.
I’d looked at a few different cars, but it was always going to be a sports car. Saw a nice Bug Eye Sprite, but when I finally tracked down a salesman it was already sold. Took a Datsun Fairlady out for a test drive, but it drove like the wheels were encased in cement.
I finally spotted the MGB at a “specialist” dealer. Specialist in selling interesting cars of dodgy quality. They talked me out of getting an inspection, “they’ll just say ‘that vinyl has a rip in it’”. I was young, gullible and eager. At $5,500 it was the cheapest MGB in Brisbane at the time, but still a struggle for me to raise the finance. Anyway, the deal got done and I took delivery.
As a very inexperienced driver who’d not done any city driving I got my sister to drive us out of town heading for the Sunshine Coast. I took over once we cleared the city. It was good to get behind the wheel and open it up on the highway… for a little while.
We got about a third of the way home and suddenly I found, with my foot flat to the floor, we were doing about 20 miles an hour on the highway. I pulled into the first service station I saw and the mechanics there quickly identified the problem. They handed me the fuel filter they’d just removed and it weighed about a kilo. It was almost solid with mud.
Now that the car could drink again we hit the road and I was loving the drive again. Not long afterwards I had the same issue, but knew what to do this time. It got to the stage where I carried spare fuel filters in the boot and could replace them in a moment. Eventually I did clean out the fuel tank, at the same time that I was having the radiator replaced after the engine had surged forward on the engine mounts and the fan carved a neat circle in the back of the radiator. I put the movement down to hard braking and downshifting while crossing a railway line.
There were lots of issues with the MG. The fuel pump in the boot would occasionally choose to stop. Tapping it, or just slamming the boot lid in anger, usually got it going again. The rust and the rotting wooden trim, along with the mud in the fuel tank, suggested it had probably not had a good time in the Brisbane floods. The wire wheels with knock on hubs would sometimes decide to move differently to the axles and I’d strip some splines. This caused a knock on hub to go bouncing down the road one night when I braked to turn into my street and the axle stopped but the wheel didn’t. The roof was particularly susceptible to holes and the dreaded brown glaze of the back plastic windscreen. It was usually easier to just leave it off rain or shine. If you drove fast enough most of the rain went over your head anyway.
Regardless of the issues I loved that car. I had lots of adventures in it and crammed way too many people into it on various occasions. I enjoyed sharing it with my young nieces and nephews, dropping them off to school or just driving around the block with them hanging out of it. Probably not particularly safety conscious, but definitely fun.
Eventually I had to grow up. Years later I got married and used it to go on honeymoon, but not long afterwards decided to sell it. In early 1986 I sold it for $3,500 to a mechanic who was going to restore it for his daughter. It was a sad day when he collected it, and I still miss it to this day. I’ve just recently bought another convertible, Mercedes CLK, but nothing will ever replace the thrill of that first car.
