REALITY BITES

Elated after being reunited with a treasured family runabout, John now realises that returning his Magnette to the road won’t be easy – or cheap

1965 MG MAGNETTE MKIV

Getting the family Magnette out of its garage in Suffolk and transported to a safe home in Birmingham was a full-on long day, so although I could see that it was badly corroded, I didn’t get a chance to see just how bad it was. I was able to put it on a ramp and really assess it recently, however, and the news is not good. You could even say that it’s catastrophic. While digging it out of the garage we’d been underneath to remove the brake drums and seen that there was not much there solid enough to jack it up on. We’d even seen a spring hanger poking up through the boot floor, but I’ll be honest – I wasn’t quite prepared for this level of bad… Let’s start with the good bits and work down to the disaster. A leaky engine means that the front is not as bad as I’d feared. There is rust and areas that will need welding but

I’m pretty sure it can be restored from the bulkhead forward, albeit with a new panel under the radiator, new front panel, new front valance, some patching in the engine bay and two new front wings.

The U-channel that acts as a sort of ladder chassis within the monocoque looks salvageable until you get to the tail of the gearbox. Thereafter, working backwards, it starts to get really rusty until it rises up over the rear axle where it’s just, well, kind of not really there anymore.

The inner and outer sills on both sides are basically dust, which is okay because you can buy all of those panels, but I’m not convinced that the metal we would be welding to would be strong enough – I think the bottom of the A-, B- and C-posts would need sorting before the sills. Oddly the floors, which usually rust badly, are pretty good in the great scheme of things.

So while the front and centre parts of the car are salvageable – albeit with many hours work by a good welder – the rear is a much more serious problem. The boot

floor is crumbly and the rear inner wheel arches are similarly colander-like. In short rescuing this bodyshell would mean hand-building a whole new rear section of the monocoque from the C-pillar backwards. This matches where the garage had a damaged roof so should not have come as a great surprise but, I must admit that the sheer magnitude of it did.

If my parents had not bought this car new, and if it wasn’t a wheeled childhood memory capsule in my head, I know for certain that I would not be considering restoring it using the original bodyshell. It is that car, however, so I’m not yet

ready to give up hope – emotionally at least – although I know full well that it would be both astronomically expensive and difficult to do.

At the moment I’m building a garage and finishing other cars, so the Magnette can sit while I contemplate a solution. I’m a great believer in not making decisions until I need to, but came away from this inspection with the euphoric bubble created by re-connecting with this family heirloom after 30 years well and truly burst.

I’m not sure what to do, so I’m going to let the news sink in, process it and take one step at a time.

Passenger side spring hanger is so corroded it’s a miracle it’s still in place.

Leaky B-series engine helped to save the front.

Driver’s side rear spring hanger has practically disappeared.

Sills are not so much corroded as gone, although both inner and outer sills are available so that’s not necessarily an issue.

Nearside inner sill crumples when you push it in. Not exactly structually sound, then…

Close inspection has revealed the true extent – and horror – of the Magnette’s rot. It’s not pretty.

The rear seat, which John remembers sitting on as a child, is in much better condition than the rest of the car.