> I found a 1958 MGA coupe in a barn. The car is complete, no
> significant rust, and the owner will take $250.00 to get it out of
> the barn. The car was last driven in 1974. I know that this will
> be an enormous project, but it looks fun. Can someone who
> is 6'1" fit in an MGA coupe? Will the list disown me?
> Joe Davis
Joe,
You will fit in the car, the biggest obstacle to your comfort not being the
seating position or the roof line, but being the steering wheel. I highly
recommend going with a much smaller diameter wheel in the MGA, as for big
people it can really cut into the middle of your thighs.
The MGA is a beautiful car with ever increasing value, at $250 we would only
disown you if you did not purchase it. It is a difficult car to restore,
aligning panel gaps is much more involved than on Triumph models. Be wary
of crap aftermarket parts, Moss has finally fixed the tooling for the
bumpers and now they are the correct cross section shape... but still have
poor quality chrome. The aftermarket grilles are still not dimensionally
correct, and also have poor chrome, but up they are now metal as opposed to
the plastic grilles Moss was offering up until January of this year. So
having your original chrome items repaired and rechromed is by far the only
road to go, even though it will be expensive. The MGA coupe window trim
moldings on the doors are extremely hard to find, so be careful when you
have to remove yours.
The MGA is a beautiful car, so congratulations! The only thing that could
make the purchase sweeter is if the car had a twincam motor in it :-)
Do we have any other barn-find hunters on the list? I have made two notable
finds in the past five years, a Jag XK140 with a C spec engine and an MG PA
which had met an unfortunate end in a major fire with the remains then
sitting in a barn... nothing usable left on it. I did help Andy Mace pull a
timewarp Herald out of a garage, it still had the plastic sheets over the
door panels just like it had never left the dealer's lot!
Kai (now current owner of TR6 CC77896L)
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