My girlfriend pointed out a car to me at the weekend that she thought
looked interesting. It was an ugly bugger. If I'd seen it before I would
have voted for it in the recent ugly-debate on british-cars. At first I
though it was an Arkley Midget it was that ugly, but we stopped the Midget
got out and took a closer look: the styling was certainly unusual, a cross
between an Arkley and a Mini Moke; the rear light clusters were early Midget,
with the rounded top; the steel wheels were painted gold and had MG hubcaps;
the interior had a wooden dash, bucket seats in the front plus rear seats;
it had no doors, which was the first give-away to it not being an Arkley,
as the Arkley retains the doors from the Midget donor cars; the soft-top
had long sides with a zipper that ran down to the sill a'la Mini Moke; the
grill gave away the donor car - it came directly from an MG 1100/1300; and
a look under the wheel arches revealed the hydrolastic suspension.
After we had been stood in this front garden poking around the car for a
few minutes the owner came out and started chatting to us about it. He said
that it was an MG Magenta based on an MG 1100 (well spotted me). There
were about 600 made before the company went bust. I think he said it weighed
in at 700 kgs less than the standard car so the hydrolastic units had been
depressirised slightly and the handling was now even better and mostly
neutral. He had used the car every day to and from work for about 7 years
but had not used for the past 9 months as he had moved house and, with all
that upheaval, had not made time to fix the few bits that the car really
neaded. Unfortunately he followed this by "I'll get around to it soon"
before I had a chance to say "How much to take it off your hands?".
Despite being ugly it did look fun, it was very unusual and by his accounts
it went and handled well before he took it off the road. And the tuning
potential for it ... well! With the A series engine mounted the same way
as a Mini there is a plethora of go-faster goodies that could help it along:
8 port head, 16 valve head, fuel injection, loads of carb and exhaust options,
and what about bolting on the naughty bits from a Metro Turbo >-)
Well, I'll be keeping an eye on it and if he doesn't start working on it I
might be forced to make him an offer.
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Neil (8^)=) |
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E-Mail: vennn@hoskyns.co.uk *
or: nvenn@mpc-uk.com *
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