by Ross Finlay (02 Sep 01)

Our MGF test car was quite different, for anything like civilised motoring, from the first MG I encountered. That one almost took the skin off my back.

It was, to a certain extent, a 1934 L-type Magna, owned by a friend who spent £15 on buying it "part-restored" - a colossal over-statement. What he got was a bare chassis and various boxes of components, all of which he dragged upstairs to his first-floor bedroom.

That's where re-assembly took place, and you've guessed what happened next. He couldn't get the car downstairs again. Large chunks of MG were lowered into the garden by rope.

He was proposing to enter it for a local hillclimb, and like an idiot I went along on a test run. Of the several snags in this project, one was that the car had a mysteriously acquired Lotus 6 bonnet, and no other bodywork at all. My friend had a seat of sorts, but I was sitting on a flat plank of wood not attached to the chassis.

As he accelerated away, I slid backwards onto the exposed nearside rear tyre. Smell of singeing, almost. My jacket was never the same again.

The test run took place entirely in a built-up area. Did I mention that there was no silencer? Actually, there was no exhaust system at all.

Neighbours had been getting understandably restless about the racket of previous outings in the MG. So, about 300 yards from home, my friend cut the engine and coasted the rest of the way.

Like The Red Sea Parting

But there were two crossroads to negotiate, one of them on a bus route. He couldn't brake, because the car then wouldn't have had enough momentum to reach his house, and he didn't dare switch on the engine, or the neighbours would have been phoning the police again. So he just whooshed silently across both junctions, fingers crossed. Sounding the horn, did somebody ask? Do me a favour.

On a later outing, the MG was romping along happily when the front end of the crankshaft seized solid. Pistons and conrods hurled themselves through the block in shattered fragments. The car never did make that hillclimb. Perhaps it was all to the good.

Compared with the stripped-down Magna, a lovely little J2 I knew at the same time seemed delicate and entirely civilised. I'm delighted that people go historic racing nowadays with these charming machines.

A few years later, I did a rally - in the navigator's seat - in a TF. Purists tend to sneer at this model, as a too-late last fling of the separate-wings MG style. But when you realise how desperately starved of cash the factory was at the time, it was a praiseworthy effort, and I still think the TF looks pretty good.

This particular example, though, gave me one of the unhappiest day's rallying I've ever had. It was a well-known championship-winning car, driven in the earlier part of its career by the eldest brother of my partner for the event, and navigated by a real expert.

Overawed by the whole thing, perhaps, I started wrong-slotting. We kept arriving late at time controls where the marshals would jovially say things like: "I hope you aren't letting the old car down, boys." I was, miserably, and I still cringe at the memory.

Forward To The MGA

I did a fair number of rally miles in a couple of MGA 1600s, a 1622cc Mark II, and one of the best-prepared Twin Cam coupés in the country. It was looked after by a garage which really knew how to cosset that oh-so-sensitive engine.

What the coupé body didn't have in abundance, of course, was space. There was no room behind the seats for anything more than a couple of postcards, and if you'd measured the luggage capacity using that once-popular unit, the table tennis ball, you'd hardly have got into double figures.

We were stopped, on one rally, at a police check. The bobbies were searching all the cars that came along for a potentially dangerous escapee from a nearby prison. One of them came towards the MG, stopped, smiled, shook his head, and waved us on.

I once did a recce in France with an ex-works Sebring MGB, unfortunately with the race engine replaced by a standard lump. I seem to remember a race roll-cage and night-time lights to illuminate the race numbers; so the car looked the part, but it flattered to deceive.

All I remember clearly about the trip was that we ran over a snake at the summit of the Col de la Bataille, east of Valence. Not much to build up into a chapter in the memoirs.

The Moorland Midget

A couple of us were also loaned a works MG Midget for a local championship rally, and this one really did perform, although it also had a mind of its own.

One section involved a slippery climb up a narrow and sunken moorland track. We wheelspinned to a halt, and both of us got out to push. To this day, I can't figure out how, but the car must have been in gear. As we pushed, it chuntered off with nobody on board.

The bankings on both sides suddenly closed in too much to let either door open fully. My driver managed to scramble in, but in the process he put one of his legs through the gap between two of the steering wheel spokes, and the ensemble continued up the hill, driver halfway out, like something from a Keystone Cops film.

At the top of the slippery stretch, he managed to switch off the engine, and then got into all manner of contortions trying to disentangle himself from the steering wheel.

Some friends later said that this was all technically impossible. But I was a witness, at three o'clock in the morning, in the middle of nowhere, helpless with laughter. Happy daze.

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