By Mike Weavers
Love at first sight. It happens. Long before I experienced this phenomenon with my future wife, it happened when I saw the red MGA the college student selling encyclopedias door to door was driving when he paid a visit to our house in 1965. My 14-year-old self was smitten instantly and knew that I had to have one of those streamlined beauties. Good thing he didn’t drive up in a Jag.
Mom and Dad (rightfully) thought it a good idea for me to earn the money to purchase my dream car instead of using a utilitarian Detroit vehicle they would have given me. Fortunately, Howard and Bill gave me a job at Central Food at $1.10/hour (1965 wages, not bad) so a few years and thousands of bags of groceries later the savings account was getting within reach of used MGA prices at the time. Dad and I began watching the classified ads in the Winston Salem and Charlotte papers and finally found a likely candidate, a white 1960 1600 roadster with wire wheels and only 45K lively miles on the odometer. The guy selling it had owned it with his brother and not long after acquiring full title to it was told by his wife that they would soon be expecting their first child and would be needing a station wagon, not a two seat sports car.
My first time behind the wheel of any LBC was the test drive with the owner in suburban Charlotte. I was scared spitless. The low profile over the bonnet (couldn’t even SEE the right fender), the low seat, the quick steering, the tiny little gearshift (just like Hap Adams described) was totally new and foreign and exciting beyond belief. We paid the asking price of $550 in May 1968 at the end of my junior year in high school. The guy was really nice and patient with my thousand questions, most of them showing how little I knew about the car we were buying. I had meant to keep in touch with him, but time and distance have a way of thwarting the best of intentions, especially a distracted 16-year-old. More on that later.
Today I still remember the awed, somewhat terrified excitement of following Mom and Dad out of Charlotte and the long drive back to the mountains of Ashe County with a short stop in Mt Holly to visit Dad’s grandma which gave me a chance to study the dogeared, rain-soaked owner’s manual about rudiments of MGA operation and maintenance. Son of a gun, the now previous owner wasn’t kidding me about the way that turn signal was supposed to work.
There weren’t many LBCs in Ashe County in the mid-60s. There was a body shop owner across town who owned a TR3A that I exchanged waves with occasionally and an owner of one of the furniture manufacturing plants had an XKE 2+2 coupe, a beautiful car that would have been stunning had I not already seen the much sleeker roadster in Sports Car Graphic.
Early in my association with the MG I found that I’m no “wrench”. I could sometimes get things apart but getting them back together with intended function restored without having parts left over was another matter. Thank goodness Dad (retired Naval aviation mechanic) took an active interest in the car to help keep it running. He and great-Uncles Ned and George in their Warrensville Jeep/Rambler shop went through the engine and “freshened it up” (bearings, valves, guides, rings, etc.) and did the same with the transmission, replacing the chipped first gear and 2nd gear synchronizer. The synchronizer needed replacement just from wear from vigorous driving by the previous owner, but the chipped first gear was totally my bad. Double clutching into unsynchronized first gear while the car is still moving sounds great in the literature and the theory is sound and feels great when you hit it but when you don’t, it’s painful and eventually costly. Lesson learned. Uncles Ned and George were amused, Dad less so.
The body shop owner with the TR3A got some business from me when I found that in spite of the incredible handling in the mountain curves (especially compared to that of the family Pontiac), it can be overcooked by the overenthusiastic novice. A slide into a ditch reduced the capacity of the 10-gallon gas tank to 8 ½ gallons and Dad and I agreed the right rear fender needed a quick repair before Mom discovered the oopsie. Fortunately, the dent could be banged out (they did that in those days) and repainted for $50.
Adventures and misadventures too many to recount in high school. Most embarrassing was being invited (as owner of one of the few convertibles in town) to drive in the homecoming parade with one of the pretty girls of the court perched precariously on the deck behind the cockpit. Should have warned her I was having some issues with the clutch at the time, and unfortunately rolled her mid-wave onto the luggage rack on the boot.
Left the MGA with Mom and Dad and little brother when I departed for college because freshmen/sophomores weren’t allowed cars at campus, in retrospect, for good reason. Dad enjoyed driving the MG (he liked to shift at 5 grand, something I was warned by the previous owner not to do often) and as luck would have it, left it out in the driveway the day little brother came off the hill behind the house, out of control on his minibike and creating some interesting new contours in the left front bumper and overrider.
Finally, was able to take the car to Raleigh in college. Parking stickers on campus were expensive and hard to come by and many students found they could park just off-campus in Pullen Park for free. I cannot believe that the MG was unmolested in those two years, unpatrolled and vulnerable. These days you just don’t leave an LBC alone even in a populous big box parking lot. I was very lucky regarding theft or vandalism though unhappy to leave her exposed to the elements.
Drove many thousands of miles in college, to and from home and to and from summer jobs out of state. Largely the MG was reliable, and Prince Lucas smiled benevolently on us offering relatively few glitches, just often enough to keep one from being complacent. However, more body work was needed when the driver in front of me in Greensboro suddenly decided to change lanes and brake aggressively to make a left turn in front of me in the rain. Left front fender this time. Anyone keeping score?
To be continued.