THE JC MIDGE
BUILT LIKE A JIGSAW, USING A JIGSAW
For many people, the dream of building their own car will be out of reach, as the mortgage and family will have to come first. To bring this dream within reach, there have been at least two books written about how to build a Lotus Seven–type car from scratch to a tight budget: Build Your Own Sports Car for as Little as £250 by Ron Champion (1996) and Build Your Own Sports Car: On a Budget by Chris Gibbs (2007). Most people would be happy with the solutions offered by these authors, but, when Graeme Crimp of Blenheim wanted to start his project back in 1987, neither of these books existed. Graeme wanted a straightforward project that would be very cheap and not require too much mechanical knowledge.
Graeme clearly remembers when he got the final push to build his car. He was out driving with his mother one day when he saw a Lotus Seven sitting at the side of the road. He told his mother that he had always wanted to build a car. “Well, why don’t you?” she replied.
All he needed now was a project.
Remember those model aeroplane kits?
Fortunately, John Cowperthwaite had, just a few years earlier, been of the same frame of mind as Graeme. In 1984, despite being the owner of the fourth-largest kit car company in the UK, the Moss Motor Co., John believed that his entry-level Triumph Herald–based kit, the Moss Roadster, priced at around £4300 (NZ$8200) in today’s money, was still too expensive for many. Approximately 500 were built. The NZ$8200 was basically for the fibreglass body — by the time you added the cost of the brightwork and a donor car, the project would have cost more than twice as much.
There had to be a way for people on a tight budget to get into the car-building hobby more cheaply. “I envisaged that a period design of classic car with no compound curves could be made using plywood and aluminium,” said Cowperthwaite. From this evolved the idea of creating a full-size set of paper patterns that could be used to cut all the plywood panels, just like a large balsa-wood model kit. These patterns would be accompanied with instructions, drawings, and pictures of each stage of the build project, plus plenty of photographs of a finished car. He believed that, by using this formula, even the most inexperienced builder could at least see what he was aiming for and how to get there.
Inspired by
Cowperthwaite was not the first to devise a car that could be built using only a set of plans, but what resulted was certainly a lot easier to follow than anything else available at the time.
The Triumph Herald was the obvious choice to be the donor, as the designer was working with these on a daily basis. He decided to base his design on a nondescript ’30s roadster inspired by the MG J2, which had plenty of flat panels and very few compound curves. It would have no fibreglass panels and could be constructed on a genuinely shoestring budget. Cowperthwaite believed that, once the plans had been purchased, the builder could pop down to his local timber store and buy individual sheets of plywood whenever finances allowed. The most expensive part would be the Triumph Herald donor car, which, in 1980s Britain, could cost as little as about £40 (NZ$100) for a reasonable example.
Can be built anywhere
Cowperthwaite intended to build the prototype in his home garage, but, as that proved to be too small, he ended up building it on the concrete pad in front of it. Fortunately, it did not rain too often.
If the plywood panels were skinned with thin aluminium sheeting, Cowperthwaite surmised that the project could be completed for only around £400 (NZ$1K). To save even more, some owners could opt to cover the panels in vinyl, which was period correct and meant that, other than the bonnet, the car would not have to be painted.
The plans cost about £24 (NZ$60) and were almost immediately a runaway success, with at least 30 sets being sold each week in the mid-to-late ’80s.
These days, Cowperthwaite is still selling plans for the JC Midge. The Triumph Herald–donor car version is long gone, and the current model, known as the ‘Midge Mk2’, even has four-wheel drive, as it uses the Suzuki Samurai as donor. Further information can be found at mobc.co.uk.
Blenheim build
Meanwhile, back in Blenheim, and over the years, Graeme Crimp had been buying the British Which Kit? magazine. In a 1987 issue, he read a feature story about the JC Midge. Having grown up on a farm, Graeme had the typical Kiwis-can-doanything-given-a-bit-of-number-eight-wire attitude. His father had once given him an old, non-working stationary Lister motor to tinker with. Graeme had it running in an afternoon, much to his father’s surprise.
Intrigued by the JC Midge and knowing that his brother was currently in England and not too far away from the Moss factory, Graeme dispatched him to buy a set of plans. On making the princely investment of $90, Graeme launched himself into a hobby that would last him a lifetime. At the time, he was teaching agriculture at Marlborough Boys College and the school workshop class had a 1958 Triumph Herald that had been stripped down and put together so many times that Velcro should have been used to hold it together. As it wasn’t wanted anymore, Graeme offered the school $150 for it.
The Triumph Herald was the obvious choice to be the donor, as the designer was working with these on a daily basis. He decided to base his design on a nondescript ’30s roadster inspired by the MG J2
Glue and scissors
Once he had the chassis, he cleaned it up and narrowed it, as specified by the JC Midge plans. Thanks to his days on the farm and his father’s patience, welding the new outriggers in place was not a problem. Firing up the motor was a bit of an issue, though. A thoughtful college student had liberally applied glue to the engine’s 948cc internals, making it very difficult to turn over. Once this minor setback was resolved, Graeme had a complete rolling chassis.
The next step was the body. The plans, being 1:1 scale, were supposed to be glued onto the plywood and then cut out. Graeme, being of a thrifty nature, and wanting to keep the plans in pristine condition, traced around them on the plywood with a pattern wheel. The panels were then cut out with a jigsaw. The sheets of aluminium skin that would be used to clad the plywood were so light that they could be cut with a pair of kitchen scissors. It was a relatively simple job, although his his wife would later wonder why it had been difficult to cut bacon.
The bonnet side panels were made from a heavier gauge aluminium, so the cutting of the side louvres was outsourced to an engineering company in Blenheim. The top of the bonnet was made by cutting the shapes from the supplied patterns and then using a piece of six-inch plastic downpipe to get the curve. Graeme decided to make a fibreglass scuttle, and this was probably the hardest part of the car, as it had to be made to fit a windscreen frame that had come off a very old Austin.
A WOF and you’re good to go
On 20 November 1989, Graeme’s car was registered for the first time, and was one of the last home-built cars to need only a warrant of fitness to gain road legality (in the early ’90s, Low Volume Vehicle
certification for all kit and home-built cars would become the minimum standard).
Even though things were simpler then, the car did not sail through its testingstation inspection without a hitch. It needed a new silencer, and the spare wheel had to be moved, as it was slightly obscuring a tail light. The headlights, which were vintage items that Graeme had found on somebody’s shelf, were deemed unfit for purpose, so sealed-beam units were placed inside the shells.
With its 948cc Triumph Herald engine, it was not the fastest car on the road, but it was what Graeme had wanted it to be — a classic touring car. In the early days, he had an issue with it overheating and suspected that this was due to glue blocking some of the waterways. This problem was solved outside Blenheim airport one day when the engine seized up. Graeme was fortunately able to seek the assistance of a friend and the friend just happened to have a Mitsubishi Celeste 1600 engine that he no longer had a use for. It still had attached to it all the ancillaries, including the bellhousing, clutch, and a five speed gearbox.
Always evolving
Since then, like the woodman’s axe, the car has been constantly changed and improved. Graeme never liked the original front mudguards that he had made, so he bought a tandem aftermarket trailer guard that he cut in half, narrowed, and welded together again. The rear guards are fibreglass, and they came from another Midge builder in Wellington, who was making a set for his own car. Originally the car was painted red, then blue, before undergoing a complete refurbishment in the 2000s resulting in its current colour scheme. The most recent additions are the plywood hardtop and the stylized acrylic Midge bonnet emblem.
Graeme admits that the JC Midge is a project that will never be finished, and he will always be tinkering with it. Not having much surplus cash, every task is done with thriftiness in mind. To date, the most expensive components have been the Triumph Spitfire wire wheels. When possible, Graeme tackles each new task himself, learning the necessary skills as required. Every refurbishment and improvement gets done in his shed, unless it requires more than three attempts or he makes a hash of it, at which point he considers getting outside help.