Post by bracabric on Mar 11, 2010 10:44:16 GMT -5
PJ, Saw this article and thought it would interest you,
Dick
MGB Roadster - MGB: the nation's favourite classic car
It is one of the great myths, up there with "It won't seem nearly so bad in the morning" and "I love you, too": namely the blokeish assertion that "women just don't get it about cars". Women, in my experience, love cars.
But to win the adoration of women they have to be of a certain vintage, sexy and fast (the cars, not the women). Which means they must be classics.
And what of men? Well, we might dribble on about top speeds and deprecation values but we really buy motors to boost our pitifully low levels of attractiveness.
And as women so often fall for throaty, open-topped beasts, shouldn't everyone risk a dalliance with an older motor?
I was led astray aged four when a family friend drove my brother and me in his sublime Jaguar Mk II from Folkestone to Canterbury in 14 minutes.
Through adolescence I developed unrequited crushes on an Aston Martin DB5 and Lamborghini Miura.
Since then I've consummated passing passions with some ravishing old beauties, many sadly stuffed with filler.
Such are the experiences I'll share in my new column on classic cars, which will also detail the money rows, infidelities and tears leading to messy divorces. Mainly from cars.
Classics have come close to costing me my marriage. Among the women who love big old bangers, there is one who loathes them, and I'm married to her.
This hatred for cars that break down on rainy nights (and sunny mornings) might also extend to other women whose husbands have been seduced by a classic.
For it is one thing admiring a friend's works of automotive art, another to have one on your own drive leaking money faster than Castrol GTX.
We should perhaps add to our list of myths the assertion that "a classic car will be an investment". It won't.
But for my wife the primary evil of classics remains their propensity to conk out more alarmingly than David Hasselhoff after a good lunch.
Like on our first date (1973 Daimler Sovereign, Kensington Church Street, broken fan belt) and with regularity ever since.
If I'd been some dashing cad like the late Alan Clark I'd have removed my date's stockings before fashioning them as a makeshift replacement, then taken a gander under a certain other bonnet; instead we waited (and yes, it was raining) for my close friends in RAC Recovery.
Since then we've had enough disasters to fill a book on Gordon Brown. There was the 1976 Triumph Dolomite Sprint head gasket explosion (Hampstead High Street, my face redder than the paintwork) and the 1985 Jaguar XJS starting problem (most corners of Britain).
Oh, and as my wife reminds me, the 1967 Jaguar S-type overheating (Romney Marsh, a winter's midnight, with baby in the back).
If such husbandly profligacy were not sufficient, women could also be put off by the coves they may encounter in the classic car world.
Which brings us to the MGB, debut subject of this column and both my first car and Britain's most popular classic.
Almost half a century after its birth, this pretty, classless, fun car still defines the British sports car, as unmistakably of these shores as black cabs and summer rain.
As well as cheery drivers who flash headlights at fellow owners, they do attract obsessives. A female friend dumped her boyfriend after he took her "for a whole weekend" to a meeting of the MG Owners Club.
Still shaken, she recounted: "He spent the entire time polishing his perishing car - in the rain. And you know, the car was turd colour - turd I tell you."
I didn't like to admit that the MG crowd was positively normal; if she wanted adults indulging in loves that should never speak their name she might have checked out the Morris Marina Owners' Club.
Purists favour early models with wire wheels but my young pockets didn't stretch beyond a later black GT with rubber bumpers. Not that this punctured my pride: I thought it looked Aston Martin-esque and loved the burbling exhaust note, even if the top speed was 105mph.
I'd found MGs cool since Joanna Lumley drove a yellow GT in The New Avengers. Oh, and also since MG's memorable adverts featuring young lovelies fingering gearsticks in ways I didn't quite understand but realised was all good.
I only developed doubts about my love chariot when I drew up to a bar on the King's Road, only to find "friends" cackling heartily: "Parp, parp! Here comes Toad". I was christened "Terry Thomas".
And so, inevitably, we parted. As with a girlfriend, one does so tearfully, but gratefully. Now that memories of expensive repair trips to the charming Robert Dicks of MG Motoring have faded, I wouldn't mind another.
There are vast numbers out there and bountiful spare parts, even entirely new bodies. I'd now have the bigger-engined MGC.
That or a later V8, so quick a farmer near me outran the police in one to avoid being breathalysed; next day the local bobby called to say he wouldn't bring charges as he'd so loved seeing the MG dance its escape through an orchard.
MGs are a delight and with spring soon upon us, what could be lovelier than blasting down a tree-shaded lane in an early baby B rag top? If your beloved (male or female) objects, remind them that as summer passions go, there are less innocent ways to stray…
THE FACTS
MGB
Production 1962-1980
Price now £5,000 should get you a good one
Check out mgownersclub.co.uk
Dress code Hot pants or tight white trousers
Dick
MGB Roadster - MGB: the nation's favourite classic car
It is one of the great myths, up there with "It won't seem nearly so bad in the morning" and "I love you, too": namely the blokeish assertion that "women just don't get it about cars". Women, in my experience, love cars.
But to win the adoration of women they have to be of a certain vintage, sexy and fast (the cars, not the women). Which means they must be classics.
And what of men? Well, we might dribble on about top speeds and deprecation values but we really buy motors to boost our pitifully low levels of attractiveness.
And as women so often fall for throaty, open-topped beasts, shouldn't everyone risk a dalliance with an older motor?
I was led astray aged four when a family friend drove my brother and me in his sublime Jaguar Mk II from Folkestone to Canterbury in 14 minutes.
Through adolescence I developed unrequited crushes on an Aston Martin DB5 and Lamborghini Miura.
Since then I've consummated passing passions with some ravishing old beauties, many sadly stuffed with filler.
Such are the experiences I'll share in my new column on classic cars, which will also detail the money rows, infidelities and tears leading to messy divorces. Mainly from cars.
Classics have come close to costing me my marriage. Among the women who love big old bangers, there is one who loathes them, and I'm married to her.
This hatred for cars that break down on rainy nights (and sunny mornings) might also extend to other women whose husbands have been seduced by a classic.
For it is one thing admiring a friend's works of automotive art, another to have one on your own drive leaking money faster than Castrol GTX.
We should perhaps add to our list of myths the assertion that "a classic car will be an investment". It won't.
But for my wife the primary evil of classics remains their propensity to conk out more alarmingly than David Hasselhoff after a good lunch.
Like on our first date (1973 Daimler Sovereign, Kensington Church Street, broken fan belt) and with regularity ever since.
If I'd been some dashing cad like the late Alan Clark I'd have removed my date's stockings before fashioning them as a makeshift replacement, then taken a gander under a certain other bonnet; instead we waited (and yes, it was raining) for my close friends in RAC Recovery.
Since then we've had enough disasters to fill a book on Gordon Brown. There was the 1976 Triumph Dolomite Sprint head gasket explosion (Hampstead High Street, my face redder than the paintwork) and the 1985 Jaguar XJS starting problem (most corners of Britain).
Oh, and as my wife reminds me, the 1967 Jaguar S-type overheating (Romney Marsh, a winter's midnight, with baby in the back).
If such husbandly profligacy were not sufficient, women could also be put off by the coves they may encounter in the classic car world.
Which brings us to the MGB, debut subject of this column and both my first car and Britain's most popular classic.
Almost half a century after its birth, this pretty, classless, fun car still defines the British sports car, as unmistakably of these shores as black cabs and summer rain.
As well as cheery drivers who flash headlights at fellow owners, they do attract obsessives. A female friend dumped her boyfriend after he took her "for a whole weekend" to a meeting of the MG Owners Club.
Still shaken, she recounted: "He spent the entire time polishing his perishing car - in the rain. And you know, the car was turd colour - turd I tell you."
I didn't like to admit that the MG crowd was positively normal; if she wanted adults indulging in loves that should never speak their name she might have checked out the Morris Marina Owners' Club.
Purists favour early models with wire wheels but my young pockets didn't stretch beyond a later black GT with rubber bumpers. Not that this punctured my pride: I thought it looked Aston Martin-esque and loved the burbling exhaust note, even if the top speed was 105mph.
I'd found MGs cool since Joanna Lumley drove a yellow GT in The New Avengers. Oh, and also since MG's memorable adverts featuring young lovelies fingering gearsticks in ways I didn't quite understand but realised was all good.
I only developed doubts about my love chariot when I drew up to a bar on the King's Road, only to find "friends" cackling heartily: "Parp, parp! Here comes Toad". I was christened "Terry Thomas".
And so, inevitably, we parted. As with a girlfriend, one does so tearfully, but gratefully. Now that memories of expensive repair trips to the charming Robert Dicks of MG Motoring have faded, I wouldn't mind another.
There are vast numbers out there and bountiful spare parts, even entirely new bodies. I'd now have the bigger-engined MGC.
That or a later V8, so quick a farmer near me outran the police in one to avoid being breathalysed; next day the local bobby called to say he wouldn't bring charges as he'd so loved seeing the MG dance its escape through an orchard.
MGs are a delight and with spring soon upon us, what could be lovelier than blasting down a tree-shaded lane in an early baby B rag top? If your beloved (male or female) objects, remind them that as summer passions go, there are less innocent ways to stray…
THE FACTS
MGB
Production 1962-1980
Price now £5,000 should get you a good one
Check out mgownersclub.co.uk
Dress code Hot pants or tight white trousers
, I commuted to school in a MGA through winter snows & summer humidity. My 91 year old dad still chuckles about the time I took him for a ride & the fuel pump solenoid failed (points issue). In order to get home, I jury rigged a couple of wires from the solenoid to the passenger seat where I instructed my dad to touch the wires together at my command, which was about every 5-10 seconds as I reacall. The reassuring clack told me that a slug of fuel just got delivered. Talk about a team effort. 
