Our Classics
A visit to Hall’s Garage’s open day leaves Mike harbouring expensive plans for the Midget
1977 MG MIDGET 1500
If you happened to be in Lincolnshire a while back, you may have noticed the air suddenly turning a vivid shade of blue. The reason for this was simple – I’d driven the Midget out of my garage on a beautifully sunny Saturday afternoon, dropped the hood and strapped my young son into the passenger seat – only to discover that the driver’s seatbelt had jammed. Yet again.
A combination of mindless violence and purple-faced Anglo Saxon invective eventually got the inertia reel to relinquish its grip on the belt, but I’d had enough – it was clearly time to get it replaced, not least because the car had a pressing engagement that it simply could not miss – Hall’s Garage’s annual open day, just ten days hence.
PCB and I attended the inaugural event in Morton last year, and I enjoyed a pleasant few hours wandering around workshops that are usually off-limits to the public, peering at classic MGs in varying states of dismemberment and ogling the eclectic bunch of classics that owners brought along with them. This year’s event was much the same, but turned up a notch or three – so many cars arrived to help celebrate Hall’s 70th anniversary (and launch of a new car – see news, page 3), in fact, that there were initially no parking spaces left when I rocked up. Still, my car made a new friend in the shape of a lovely early Austin-Healey Sprite in its slightly precarious temporary space on the busy A15, shortly before I managed to finally squeeze it onto a grassy area bulging with classics. The only problem with taking your car to a (mostly) all-MG event, of course, is that you inevitably end up comparing your own car with other people’s. And that sort of thing can soon get very expensive if, like me, you’re the sort of person who can resist anything but temptation. Dreams of replicating the couple of Tifosi Rana Frogeyealikes in attendance will probably remain just that, but I found myself spending way too much time poring over one Midget in particular.
I’m not normally a fan of modified classics, but the more Midget 1500s I see whose owners have chosen to chuck the bumpers into a skip, the more I like them – they just look so much sleeker and cooler, especially from the rear. It’s not as simple as that, of course – online forums are awash with postings from frustrated Midget owners furiously debating how to smooth over the rear bumper mounting points and which front grilles/ indicators look best – and you have to factor in the cost of a partial respray, of course.
My personal preference would be for an early (pre-1966) front grille and clear lozengeshaped indicators – much like the stunning green 1965 Midget I spotted at Hall’s, in fact, which was packing body-coloured lower sills, a cool black hardtop and even cooler anthracite Minilite wheels. Factor in a smoothly-rolled rear panel, and I’d be in Midget heaven.
The drive back home was spectacularly – and unexpectedly – sun-soaked, but I was soon jolted out of my increasingly lurid reveries when I got home and discovered that PCB’s usual oil incontinence seemed to have got quite a bit worse, and the engine had developed an unusual noise that sounds suspiciously like a fanbelt on its last legs.
So, it looks like PCB will soon be returning to Hall’s Garage after all – just not for extensive (and expensive) body work.