MG Magnette ZA

There’s still much to be done a year on from Tom’s last MG ZA update

A familiar feeling descended on me as I strapped Maggie, my 1956 MG Magnette ZA, onto the back of a trailer.

In my last report about a year ago, she – and a whopping great welding bill – was about to return home with for a break away from the garage because I’d run out of money.

Pretty much everything that was metal on the offside needed welding and everything that wasn’t metal was fi ller and needed replacing with metal.

I knew that the break was going to be lengthy because I was planning a wedding, and with a big career change also ahead, it was time for a breather.

Our wedding day was wonderful and a 1965 Daimler 250 V8 came to the rescue while Maggie sat in my garage awaiting her next round of surgery.

To my untrained eye, the nearside looks worse than the offside did and

I think that’s down to the fact that the door to my parents’ garage, where the car sat for more than 20 years, was on that side and let moisture in. It will mean that I’ll have gone over my initial budget by about a third and spent more than the car will probably ever be worth when the bodywork is complete, bearing in mind that the engine has already been rebuilt. But you can’t put a price on bringing your late father’s car back to life.

Now all I can do is wait. By the time

I get the ZA back, that will hopefully be the end of the bits that I can’t do myself and the start of the bits that I can perhaps do with a bit of help.

Structural integrity is an area I really don’t possess the skills for, so that’s where the people at Quest Classic Car Restoration in Orrell come in.

A lot of people are asking about progress on the car – I even received a call from a previous owner after he saw my last update, and I still haven’t called him back, despite the number being written on a pad on my desk for all this time.

Hopefully when I do make the call, it’ll be to give them some good news...