A CHANGE OF PACE

Barry Jenkinson is a life-long petrolhead with a string of very fine and very fast sports cars on his automotive CV, so what persuaded him to change tack and commission the total restoration of a humble MG Midget? Simon Goldsworthy finds out.

Chatting with Barry about cars, it soon becomes clear that he has had the pleasure of owning some very exotic and desirable cars. Jaguar, Aston Martin, Ferrari

– it seems that just about the only glamour marque he's not had parked on his drive at one time or another is Lamborghini. However, one sports car marque that is conspicuous by its absence from the list is MG.

' Well that is not quite true,' he adds, 'because I did have an MGC when I was in my 20s, but that was the only MG I've ever owned before. I have always been drawn to sports cars rather than large and luxurious ones, so it is a little surprising that I never stumbled across the Midget earlier in my motoring career. I've never disliked the car, it is just a model that has never come my way before.'

It came his way this time via a friend, who had bought a poorly barn-find example that he planned to restore and maybe take racing. They were chatting about it down the pub and this friend mentioned that he was going to put a Mazda engine in the little Midget, but Barry's preferences are more towards originality and he didn't think too much of that idea. As often happens, one drink led to another and a few days later Barry found himself having a look at the Midget with a view to buying it.

'The car wasn't worth much in the state it was in, only a few hundred pounds,' he says, 'but it did have a nice registration plate which probably accounted for three times as much when I decided to buy it. Not that I'll be selling the number though, it will stay on the car where it belongs. I never even sat in the Midget before agreeing to take it on – like most classics awaiting restoration, there was so much junk inside it that you couldn't sit in it anyway.'

By his own admission Barry is not mechanically minded, so his next task was finding somebody to restore it for him. Hall's Garage in Lincolnshire came highly recommended by another classic petrolhead friend, so Barry paid Steve Hall a visit up. Hall's Garage are now well versed in Midgets, being the people behind a number of body conversions for them such as the Tifosi Rana (a Frogeye replica), the SS (a Sebring Sprite reincarnation) and the new J.E.M. (Jacobs

Evolution Midget) fastback. Despite this present focus on Midgets, Steve himself is a bit of an MGB man at heart.

'I have been doing the job for so long that I am from the era when Midgets and Bs were being used all the time,' he explains. 'Back then, Midgets/ Sprites got a bad name because they were all driven by students and young people who just didn't have the money to look after them. So they were never maintained properly, and your heart would sink whenever one

turned up at the garage. In contrast, people would usually be willing to spend money on their Bs. Times have changed though, and whereas we used to do five or six MGBs to every Midget, now it has reversed. Perhaps we've done all the Bs already! It certainly amazes me how many people have a Sprite or a Midget tucked away in the garage waiting for the "one day" when it will be restored.'

Barry was obviously impressed with what he saw at Hall's, because they discussed a basic plan for his project, with the proviso that details could be changed as the project went along. That plan involved a high degree of originality, but not a slavish adherence to factory spec. Any changes were generally kept in the Midget family though, with nothing as drastic as a Mazda engine! For example, as a Mk1 Midget from 1963 this car would have had a 1098cc engine originally, but it had already been converted to the later 1275cc version of the A-series at some point in its life, a unit that first appeared in the Mk3 Midget of 1966. 'I wasn't tempted to put it back to 1098cc because I've always had relatively quick cars around me, and I didn't think I could live with anything quite that slow,' admits Barry.

Steve built the engine up as a fast road unit with a mild road/ rally cam and a long centre branch (LCB) exhaust which helps smooth out the pulses of the A-series engine's siamesed central ports. The head was also gas-flowed, and everything was lightened and balanced. It probably now puts out around 100bhp – considerably more than the 65bhp of a Mk3 Midget when new. The brakes were rebuilt as standard, but with GreenStuff pads for good stopping power and extra fade resistance, while the suspension was rebuilt with new parts as necessary and polyurethane bushes fitted throughout.

A taller 3.89 back axle from a late 1275 Midget was

fitted too, but the brief was always focussed on making a reliable car that would keep up with modern traffic, so the modifications were not extensive. Barry did think about a five-speed gearbox at one point, but since he was only planning on using it locally and not for touring across Europe, Steve advised that he'd have more fun with the original fourspeed gearbox which would suit the car better and make it more fun on country lanes.

'Everything was done in house,' continues Steve. ' We didn't have trouble getting any of the parts; in fact the parts supply is far better now than it was when we were doing these 20 years ago. Some of those new parts need a little fettling, but that is par for the course and preferable to not being able to get any parts at all.'

We are getting a little ahead of ourselves here though, because the first task was to rebuild the bodyshell. This was in a very poor state, with plenty of poor quality fibreglass repairs and patches that had been secured with pop rivets.

' We had the shell dipped,' says Steve. 'Blasting can be a bit too coarse for some cars, and no matter how much you clean the shell afterwards, there is always a bit of grit that comes out from somewhere just when you are applying the final coat of paint. Also, dipping kills everything and gives you a fresh base for applying protection and paint. However, what came back from the dipping tanks did show that the most economical way forward would be to buy a bare bodyshell which had been imported from the States and use large portions of that. Even with those secondhand parts, there was still a lot of work to be done. However, it is a general truth that you end up doing nearly as much work on a half- decent shell as you would on a really bad one, so that was not unexpected and had been factored into the project from the start.'

There was one deviation from standard when it came to the colour choice, as Barry opted for Healey Ice Blue. 'That evolved as the project progressed after he saw our Sebring Sprite,' said

Steve. 'I think it was finding out that Stirling Moss had a Sprite in this colour that tipped the balance in favour of the Healey colour. Barry wasn't sure initially on what to do inside, but didn't want anything too over the top. So I showed him the seats in our Jacobs Midget, which had the later Sprite/early Midget seats. He liked those, and they also happened to be the ones that would have come with his car from new, although there wasn't enough left of the original interior to know what had last been fitted. I suggested going with black, blue or red for the interior, and he opted for red. Then when I'd finished it, he rang me up and said he'd seen a car with a blue interior and preferred that. I asked what he wanted me to do with these red ones… As you can see, they are still in this car!' And as you can also see in our pictures, the Midget has a period hardtop. 'I am not really a convertible person, despite having had a few over the years,' admits Barry, 'and putting the hood up or down on an early Midget is more like building a Meccano set than a simple lifting or lowering operation. I'll no doubt take the roof off on a sunny day, but more often I will leave it on.'

A hardtop can make a car like the Midget boom a little on the road, but when all the bodywork had been done on this one, the inside panels were coated with Lizard Skin, a spray- on product that absorbs vibration and noise. It does a really good job of it too, making for an incredibly quiet car – by Midget standards at least. Another potential issue with a hardtop is that Midgets are not the easiest of cars to get into anyway, and having the roof up or a fixed roof in place does not make it any easier. Fortunately Barry is not big framed at 5ft 6in tall, and does not find it a problem. 'A friend of mine came over for a look, but he is 6ft 1in and couldn't even get in it,' laughs Barry. 'He reckoned I must have been mad to get

the Midget, but it suits my frame perfectly. It will only be me and the dog going out for pleasure runs anyway, and I reckon it will be plenty big enough for the two of us.'

However, we still have not addressed the fundamental question of why Barry would choose to move out of his exotica and into a Midget. 'The logic behind it was that we all get older, and I am looking to retire in the next few years,' explains

Barry. 'It is all very well having big expensive sports cars, but they cost a lot of money when they go wrong. They often cost a lot even when they don't go wrong – I had a Ferrari a few years ago that needed cam belts along with a service, and I picked up a bill for £5000. I wasn't in that league – while I could afford to buy a Ferrari, I couldn't afford to run it. In contrast, a thousand pounds goes a long way when fixing or servicing a Midget.

'Not that I am expecting to have too many repairs. I wanted something that was restored because I didn't want it breaking down all the time, and everything on this one has been made like new. I used to have a lovely old Mk1 Jaguar, but that wasn't very reliable, mainly with petrol starvation. It got to the point that I was wary of taking it on a long journey because I never knew if I would get to my destination, and because I didn't use it much the car became even less reliable. I do intend to put maybe 1500 miles a year on the Midget, so not a massive amount but enough to keep it exercised.

'The Midget may be slower than an Aston, but it probably won't feel it on the road. I can't wait until I can enjoy the full experience with this one, as I've only been able to do around 40 miles so far. I am still running it in and everything is still very tight, so it should get even better as it beds in and loosens up. My first impressions are that as expected it is far slower than the cars I am used to, but you are so low down that it still provides the same sort of driving excitement – on the more expensive cars you can be so isolated that just a short lapse of concentration can see you well over the speed limit without realising because you can do silly speeds without any sensation. The Midget should be just as much fun to drive, but help keep my license intact.'

Everything on the Midget appears to be Dinky sized, including the standard fitment of two 1¼in SU carburettors. This car would originally have come with a 1098cc A-series, but it had already been fitted with a later 1275cc unit by the time Barry bought it. He decided that was small enough, so Hall's rebuilt and tuned that unit.

A five-speed conversion was considered, but they decided that the four-speeder would be more fun on country roads. The interior is beautifully trimmed out in red with black piping. Note the full-width dash that was a feature of the MkI Midgets.

Wire wheels were one of the available options when this Midget was built, and are a popular choice today. A period hardtop was sourced, repaired and painted Old English White to complement the Healey Ice Blue paint. With big windows, the small cabin still has a light and airy feel.