The MGB GT is back

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Originally published in the 5 February edition of Classic Car Weekly. All rights reserved

The motoring mysteries Life On Cars still needs to solve

THIS year is definitely the year of the anniversary. Porsche’s 911 is 50, the Corvette is 60, and even the humble Hillman Imp has knocked up its first half century.

So it’s probably passed you by that today marks four years since Life On Cars choked into cyberspace for the first time. Since then, this blog – and the sister newspaper column in The Champion – have gone on a high octane journey through a world of car shows, reviews and test drives, taking in a few broken down Minis and sunburnt afternoons along the way.

However, there are a few questions which – despite having a finger on the pulse of all matters motoring since 2009 – still haven’t been answered. Niggling issues and unsolved mysteries, such as…

Does The Audi Lane actually exist? 

The more I drive on motorways, the more I’m convinced the outer lane has – perhaps through the signing of a secret EU protocol at a summit in deepest Ingolstadt – been reserved exclusively for cars with four rings on the radiator grille. Whether you’re in an entry-level A1 or a thumping A7 V12 TDI, your 95mph entrance into The Audi Lane is politely welcomed. Daring to venture there, however, in anything other than an Audi seems to result in the image above dominating your rear view mirror…

Can I get Allegrodote into the motoring lexicon?

An Allegrodote, in case you missed the article earlier this year, is an anecdote solely covering the Austin Allegro, particularly if it’s one that isn’t true. With BL’s great hatchback hope itself celebrating its fortieth birthday, it’d be great to see whether the car which inspires more urban myths than any other could be given its own special term to mark the anniversary.

Is the Renault Clio the most sensible secondhand car ever?

It struck me earlier today that almost everyone I know seems to have an owned a second generation Renault Clio, made by the French firm between 1998 and 2006. Whether it’s the 1.5DCI diesel – of £30 a year road tax fame – or the strikingly quick Renaultsport Clio 172, they do seem to reflect frankly ridiculous value for money. Which is why, I suspect, most of my mates have got one.

Why do cheeseburgers at car shows always cost £5.50? 

This one I’ve yet to understand – a cheeseburger at a car show, whether you’re in Dorset or Cheshire, Lancashire or Lanarkshire, almost always costs £5.50, making me suspect there’s some sort of layby-based cabal somewhere determining the price. That is, of course, with the exception of the Goodwood Festival of Speed, which when I visited earlier this year marked itself out as a car show of a higher calibre. This, I think, explains the £8 you paid for a burger there.

What will the next Fiat 500 spinoff be? 

We’ve already had the 500C, the Abarth, the hideous 500L, the even more hideous 500L MPW and now the frankly unbearable 500L Tracking. Chances are that by this time next year you’ll be able to buy a 500 Roadster, a 500XXL Fire Engine, a 500 Beach Buggy and perhaps a 500 Submarine. All of which will be worth £500 in a used car auction near you in the not-too-distant future.

Can you go green-laning in an electric car? 

I was wondering this earlier today when I’d stopped laughing at the Hummer electric car a UK design firm has come up with. Land Rover came up with an electric Defender earlier this year, but I am left wondering what would happen to an electric 4X4 if, for instance, you took it wading through a river in the Cumbrian countryside. Potentially, the results could be shocking…

Why are Peugeot interiors always messy?

An old colleague of mine got so cross when I put this particular pet theory across that the column I’d been planning for that week got quietly canned, for offending owners of 307s everywhere. It does, however, leave the ongoing mystery as to why so many unloved car interiors I’ve seen are in Peugeots, from a 406 Estate practically blacked by cigarette smoke, the 407 with Seventies-esque disco lighting on account of its numerous technical warnings, and a 206 lined with old McDonalds bags and a distinct whiff of vomit, even though it was barely a year old at the time.

Do ‘GB’ plates make you motor look more modern? 

A mate of mine put this to me today and – annoyingly – he’s absolutely right, although I’m not entirely sure why. All afternoon I’ve been checking out whether cars have the telltale EU blue strip at the side of the numberplate, and determined that all the cars that do somehow look newer than otherwise identical ones which don’t. Weird, but true.

Why are all classic cars described online as ‘BRAN FIND’? 

Genuine classics which are in ‘barn find’ condition are worth a fortune – witness, for instance, the E-Type which sold at auction for £109,000 after spending most of its life hidden away in the aforementioned agricultural building. However, that doesn’t excuse clumsy eBay sellers flogging any old tat as a ‘barn find’, inadvertently mis-spelling it as ‘BRAN FIND’ in the process. In the world of crap secondhand buys, any car of any age or merit can be described as ‘BRAN FIND’ if it's spent even a short of amount of time in a garage or other building.

Will my MGB GT ever be finished? 

Speaking of which, my MGB – which actually did spend a decade of its life in a barn – has over the past three of Life On Cars’ four years kept me busy with visits to shows and appearances in the pages of Classic Car Weekly. While it’s had a small fortune spent on it there are many, many jobs it could still benefit from – least of all, a proper tune up after its latest excursion made it sound like a cement mixer with a cold. I wager, though, that it’s the automotive equivalent of painting the Forth Bridge. Maybe it’s a job that’s never meant to get finished…

Life On Cars thanks both of its readers for all their support over the past four years

The MGB GT gets its fifteen minutes of fame!

As originally published in Classic Car Weekly, 17 April, 2013

The MGB GT V8 - a great car with a wonderful engine

WHAT do the Rover P6, the TVR Griffith, Range Rover and the Morgan Plus 8 all have in common?

Fans of loud, burbly exhaust notes will probably nail this one instantly - lift this very different variety of bonnets and you'll find, in one state of tune or other, a Rover V8. A aluminium thunderstorm which - thanks to it powering a string of my dad's Land Rovers and Range Rovers - provided the motoring soundtrack for much of my childhood.

 

Yet it was only yesterday I finally got up close to one of the rarer entrants from the Rover V8's back catalogue - the MGB GT V8, of which only 2,591 were made during a stint in the Seventies when British Leyland had the three litre Ford Capri in their sights. That's why I popped over to my friends at Parkhill Garage to see what should be an instant hit in my books - a Rover V8 in a MGB GT, a classic I'm more than familiar with.

It didn't disappoint.

You just have to click the video I recorded to realise why I was smitten as soon as it started up - just listen to that exhaust note! Compared to my own, four cylinder MGB it's got forty more horses to call upon, it does roughly the same to the gallon (weird, but true), and - because the aluminium V8 is such a light engine - it actually weighs a tiny bit less too. Oh, and it's rare and looks fantastic and goes like stink.

This or a Capri? You decide...

Have you got a motoring story or event you'd like to share with Life On Cars? Get in touch by sending an email to david.simister@hotmail.co.uk or leave a comment below...

The idiot and the cripple - a cautionary mechanical tale

MECHANICAL maladies, to trot out an old cliché, are like buses. You spend ages untroubled by them and then a stack of them all arrive at once.

The Life On Cars fleet normally consists of my cherished old MGB GT, the Mazda MX-5 for when I'm in the mood for a B-road blast and a Rover 214SEi for all the mundane, everyday tasks. However, while I can expect the MG, which was built at British Leyland factory in the 1970s, to be a bit temperamental, in the past week I've suffered a coolant leak on the MX-5 and starting problems on the normally faultlessly reliable Rover. 

All relatively minor problems for anyone with even the slightest bit of mechanical nous, but a talented engineer I am not. Normally I'd entrust such tasks to my long-suffering dad - who is a talented engineer - but because he's suffering from back problems I thought I'd do something dangerously unprecedented in my petrolhead life thus far.

With all the parts already ordered in, I thought I'd have a go at mending the problems myself.

It was a great plan. I'd set off at the crack of dawn this morning in the MX-5, pick up some spark plugs for the Rover, and appoint my dad as project manager while I changed the MGB's candle-in-a-jam-jar headlights for some halogen jobs. With this simple job out of the way, I'd then switch the cracked hose on the freshly cooled MX-5 for a new one, swap it for the Rover and treat that to a new distributor cap, leads and spark plugs. I had all the bits I needed, a full Saturday to do it in and a talented engineer - albeit one who couldn't, thanks to a spot of sciatica, do anything involving physical labour - to advise me.

Sadly that's not exactly how it worked out.

For starters, the MX-5 decided it wasn't going to play ball, and decided at the exact moment of me pulling into PartCo's car park that the my pre-mend bodging wasn't up to scratch. As the man behind the till passed me the Rover's leads and plugs, he looked past my shoulder and out of the window, at the increasingly sick-looking Mazda.

After giving me a slightly worried glance, he asked: "Would you, by any chance, be needing any K-Seal as well?". 

"Yeah, it might not be a bad idea," I responded, before he gave his diagnosis.

"Your car looks like it's about to explode."

Half an hour, a bottle of K-Seal's finest and three miles of automotive limping later and I was ready to crack on with the first of the three tasks - swapping the MG's lights over. It should've taken, at most, half an hour, but everything that could possibly have gone wrong did go wrong. We blew fuses. We rounded screws. We ended up getting endlessly frustrated by impossibly fiddly bits of wiring which could only really be solved by suddenly sprouting a second set of arms. Worst of all, we'd underestimated that dark force of the UK's classic car scene; British Leyland electrics. All the coffee, minor injuries and swearing in the world can't beat that one!

Several hours later and the idiot/cripple team had to throw in the towel, when the talented-but-injured member of our double act found it just too painful, literally and metaphorically, to carry on. Frustratingly, even after all that grafting I'm at the exact same point I was this morning, with an MG with a single working headlight, a Mazda that thinks it's a kettle and a Rover which refuses to start if the weather's being a bit British. 

Naturally, there's only one way to deal with this humiliating defeat on a trio of relatively simple mechanical tasks. Have another go tomorrow, of course...

My classic car insurance nightmare

ALL I got from the world of car insurance was the ambient noise of a call centre. That and a helping of Fleetwood Mac after being put on hold again.

I've written before about the mental mindfield that is insuring your motor. I moaned about how a company refused to accept two claim-free policies held consecutively over 24 months as being a legit two years' no claims. I've pondered why it is premiums only ever seem to go up, and I've reported that even the Government have probed the murky workings of this strange industry.

So I wasn't surprised when I discovered the renewal quote for the classic car policy covering my MGB GT had gone up. Again.

Even though I'd been tootling to and from car shows for the best part of two years without so much as a scratch the cost of a year's cover had gone up by £30 from last year, which was itself £30 more than the year before that. I know full well that classic policies don't accrue a No Claims Bonus in the same way as your run-of-the-mill policy would - that's part of the reason why it's so much cheaper - and £200 a year's hardly a deal breaker, but in the interests of getting even a slightly better deal I thought I'd do a bit of shopping around.

First call was to my insurer's chief rival, who said they were sure they'd be able to find me a better deal and immediately fired off the questionnaire you always get when phoning for cover. A quick blast of Fleetwood Mac after being put on hold later and they had the answer; it was £150 dearer. Not surprisingly, I politely declined.

But here's the interesting bit - rather than sound apologetic and let me get on with my Saturday afternoon, they put me through to another insurance company, who gave me the standard insurance questionnaire a second time, and when they couldn't find me a quote, they put me through to another insurance company. It was like a bizarre game of Pass The Parcel, where someone racking up a huge phone bill has to be passed around before the music - Fleetwood Mac, which seems to be the soft rock band of choice for people putting you on hold - stopped playing.

After 35 minutes on the phone, I was getting just a little bit annoyed. So you can imagine how I felt when insurance salesman number four offered me "a competitive quote" of just £520. I'll say that again - a "competitive" quote of just £320 more than I'd started with. I was furious, particularly when I pointed to him out my renewal quote was less than half the price of what he was offering.

"Is it really?," he replied sarcastically.

Don't get me wrong. I've nothing against the principle of car insurance - it's a legal requirement and you can, after all, never be too careful - but the way the industry operates makes little to no sense. These are the same people who refused to acknowledge my better half's six years of faultless driving because it wasn't British enough, and the same ones who upped the price of covering a mate's souped-up Mini from £600 to an eye-watering four grand because they'd changed their underwriter. They're the same people who once asked another pal for £8,500 to insure a Ford Capri worth less than £500 when he bought it, so it shouldn't really surprise me that, in their eyes at least, a £520 quote is "competitive" to someone who's been offered exactly the same thing for £200.

I couldn't help but conclude the UK's car insurance industry isn't a group of people or companies but just a single mysterious machine, bereft of common sense. It made no difference to them that I'm a member of the Institute of Advanced Motorists, have four years of No Claims Bonus on my everyday motor and only ever use the MGB for smoking to shows and back. As far as they were concerned I was a journalist (one of the highest risk professions there is), a twentysomething (one of the most dangerous ages to be) and a male (which used to mean I was the most dangerous gender, until a European court ruling forced them to think otherwise).

It finally came to a head last night, when yet another insurance company rang me up, didn't even give me enough time to tell them I was in work and would they mind calling me later on, and immediately put me on hold for another helping of Fleetwood Mac's finest.

I hung up.

Incidentally I'm a huge fan of Fleetwood Mac - Rumours is one of my favourite albums. I just resent the car insurance world using Don't Stop and Dreams as their phone holding tunes of choice...

Fantastic car, awful weather

IT’S not often I get an entire afternoon to reacquaint myself with an old car. Even when the afternoon’s as wet and unwelcoming as this one’s been.

The old car in question is one you’ll be familiar with if you read these pages regularly; my 1972 MGB GT , which despite being one of my most treasured possessions hasn’t done any meaningful driving since its appearance at the Ormskirk MotorFest back in August. With the weather turning increasingly cold and miserable, the tougher driving tasks have been assigned to the MX-5.

Until now.

I would’ve loved to point the MG’s nose onto the motorway and go hunting for the hills of the Lakes or North Wales but with just a few hours of meaningful daylight I play with I went to a place surprisingly few motorists outside the Sefton/West Lancashire area know about. The shots you see here are taken on Cleaves Hill, which is a stone’s throw from Aughton. Normally, it affords some great views across to Liverpool and even to the Welsh coast, but today just about the most it could do were these moody countryside shots of the MG.

The weather was cold and miserable, the amount of water involved was playing havoc with the GT’s indicator relay and the light was fading fast, but I absolutely loved my afternoon with it. It’s a proper sports car in the old fashioned sense; heavy, noisy and not especially easy to drive, but tinged with a romance and a nostalgia which make its sound, handling and style ever more enjoyable.

I just can’t wait for it to be summer again, so I can enjoy it properly.

Ormskirk MotorFest 2012 - the day in pictures

THOUSANDS of petrolheads have packed into Ormskirk to make the market town’s second MotorFest event a spectacular success.

The event, organised jointly by Aintree Circuit Club and West Lancashire Borough Council, saw scores of classic cars and bikes, including Grand Prix racers and Group B rally cars, take to the town’s one way system for the climax of a day of motorsport-themed action, in what has been one of the town’s busiest trading days.

Councillor Paul Greenall, the mayor of West Lancashire, told Life On Cars: “It’s been really good, and fortunately the weather held off. There have been lots of very good cars here, and they’ve brought thousands of people into Ormskirk.

“There’s been a lot of interest in both our charities, and for Ormskirk the number of people speaks for itself. I hope there’s another event next year, because this one’s been a big success.”

Among the highlights for visitors was the chance to watch rally star Becky Kirvan put her motorsport-prepared Ford Fiesta through its paces, the parade of supercars, including the McLaren MP4-12C, and a poignant motorcycle parade held in memory of Southport superbike racer Ben Gautrey, who was killed at a race in Cadwell Park last year.

Although the threat of bad weather had loomed over the event, with participants being treated to downpours early on, sunshine during the parades later on helped to attract as many 15,000 visitors into the town centre to see the displays near the clock tower and in Coronation Park, as well as a series of parades around the town’s one way system.

Neville Hay, event commentator, said:  “I thought it went very well, especially given the limited amount of time you have to work with, the amount you have to do and the sheer number of cars involved. It’s not something that happens every day, but I think it went extremely well.

“Last year’s event went very well, but this year’s show has gone even better. I really hope it happens again next year.”

Life On Cars took these pictures at the event:

Keep an eye on Life On Cars for a video from the event, and read more in next Wednesday’s edition of The Champion newspaper (August 29 edition).

Getting ready for Ormskirk MotorFest 2012

IT'S been a busy day at Life On Cars HQ!

Not only have I nudged the Rover 214 through its MOT for a second time - at the same garage in Rainford which did such a great job of mending the MX-5 last Christmas - but I've spent an exhausting afternoon making sure my beloved MGB GT is looking its best for an event I've spent months looking forward to.


The 2012 Ormskirk MotorFest.

I'm not sure which is more likely to misbehave tomorrow - the MG or the weather - but either way I'm looking forward to seeing the surreal sight of Grand Prix cars roaring around the streets of Ormskirk, and Group B rally cars parading past the parish church.

I've been given special permission by the show's organisers to post updates on the event's Twitter feed, so if you're keen to know what's going on tomorrow or to share your thoughts either head to @2012MotorFest on the Twitter website or simply look at the cunning feed below, which will be updated throughout the show:


The official launch magazine, made by Life On Cars, has also had a great reception, with more than 1,000 people reading it since it was published last week. If you haven't had a look through it already, by means have a read whether you're planning on visiting the show or not - it's a good read (then again, I would say that, because I wrote it).

There'll also be posters at the event promoting the magazine, which you can read while you're there by simply looking for this QR code on the poster and scanning it with your smartphone:

The F1 cars, the acres of motorsport metal, the banter with the enthusiasts, the Group B rally contenders or just the chance to show off the MG to thousands of petrolheads - I'm not sure what I'm looking forward to most.

If you're planning on going to tomorrow's event, by all means pop over for a natter...

For a full follow up visit Life On Cars tomorrow (Sunday, August 26) and read next Wednesday's edition of The Champion newspaper.

The easy way to work out what you're getting for your gallon

THE pensioners in their mollycuddled Nissan Micras powered past me as I puffed uselessly up the incline. My 40-year-old car, despite looking a bit sporty, doesn't really do hills.

It didn't really help that I was a bit nervous this time last Sunday. You'll probably already know that I've got an old MG and I've been on all sorts of adventures with it, but in the two year it's spent under my wing it's not once ventured beyond the fields of West Lancashire. Mainly because I wasn't entirely convinced it'd go much further.

But there's a first time for everything and as I gingerly ventured onto the M6 and pointed that never-ending bonnet northwards I was keen to find out not just whether my MG BGT could make it to places outside Lancashire without conking out on the hard shoulder. I also wanted to answer - and stay with me on this one - the all important question of fuel economy.

If you've ever wanted to work out what your car actually does to the gallon - and it's worth doing, because most of the manufacturers' figures are a tad optimistic - there's an easy way of doing it. Simply brim your tank until the fuel pump clicks, drive it around for 100 miles or so, and brim it again. Even though you've got to faff about converting the amount from litres into UK gallons you can fairly easy, and accurately, work out whether your car's as frugal as it should be.

I've done it with each and every one of my motors - in fact, I did with the MX-5 the other week, which despite being driven with a particularly weighty right foot around the windy roads of Wales still returned 34mpg. The best I've managed so far was with my old Renault 5, which despite having been to the moon and back mileage-wise still knocked up a respectable 43 to the gallon. Your car, if you're sensible and drive a diesel hatch like everyone else, should do at least 50 on a good run.

So what about the MG, which uses two enormous carburettors to shovel high-octane petrol into an engine designed in the Fifties and made largely from pig iron? Well, on a 150 mile run on motorways, country lanes and the A6 through rural Lancashire it managed 25.3mpg. Pretty poor compared to a new car, I'll admit, but not bad for an older model I'm still smitten with.

What's more, my car did an entire journey to somewhere far away, and back again, and didn't break down! A summer of adventures await...

An MGB GT that's even better than mine

CONTINUING our occasional series on classic cars casually spotted during lunch breaks, here's an MGB GT I found a stone's throw from the seafront earlier.

If you saw the pictures of the MG Icon earlier this week it'll be obviously from these pictures which car from the company's back catalogue inspired it; everything from the nostalgic red paintjob to the bluff, chrome radiator grille and the rear hatchback comes straight from the Sixties sports coupe.

More annoyingly though, it's in almost concours condition, making my own beloved B GT look a bit rough round the edges by comparision - even though mine's got the desirable Webasto full length sunroof and I'd be much happier parking it on a side street than this beautiful G-reg example. Envious, me? Not at all...

 Do you own this classic car? Get in touch with Life On Cars by sending an email to david.simister@champnews.com and let us know more about it!

An MGB owner's view of the new MG Icon

THIS unusual offering is being hyped as the hottest new automotive offering at this week's Beijing Motorshow - but in terms of style it's straight from the Sixties.

The MG Icon might look like a sporty, small off-roader in the vein of say, Nissan's Juke but the concept car's British designer reckons it pays tribute to MG's sports cars of the Fifties and Sixties, particularly the MGB GT coupe which would have been a familiar sight on Britain's roads after its introduction in 1966.

Anthony Williams-Kenny, MG's chief designer, said: "The MG brand has a unique set of values and heritage and allows us to offer individual design values to our products. The MG Icon represents our vision of a modern MG and we feel that the small SUV canvas demonstrates MG’s capacity for progressive design with respect for its long heritage. "We have balanced familiar brand cues, such as the wide and powerful front end graphic interpretation and, as one would expect, with a strong focus on the unique MG octagon.

The MG Icon clearly demonstrates a progressive and soulful British spirit and has a lithe and powerful stance – its proportion harmonised by feature lines interpreted from MG’s iconic greats."

The car has already won an award for Best Concept from the Beijing show's organisers but as an owner of one of the original MG BGTs from the early Seventies I'm not so sure; details like the way the lights sit on top of the rear wings worked well on the crisp coupe, but on the Icon they look a little bloated and out of place, while the rest of the car seems dominated by the enormous rear wheelarches.

It's certainly challenging but it does at least doff its cap to the company's heritage, and is more obviously a descendant of MGs of old than the MG6 and the soon-to-arrive MG5 are.

Share your motoring stories with David Simister by sending an email to david.simister@champnews.com

MGB vs MX-5 - which would you rather have?

A COUPLE of MX-5 enthusiasts I got chatting to a couple of weeks ago gave me a slightly bewildered impression when I told them I drove an MGB as well. Why, if you own an example of the world's best-selling sports car, would you spend your money on an antique built badly by British Leyland?

Let's face it. The MX-5 is faster, stronger, better built, kinder to the environment and a better handler than the thirsty old MG ever was. I should know, because - and I'm not bragging - I own both.

But choosing between them, on an Easter weekend where the sun shines even occasionally, is like choosing between your left leg and your right. On the face of it, both of these cars do the same things for the same reason, but in reality they do them completely differently. I love them both.

Driving the Mazda's a little like ordering a Bacardi Breezer on a night out; it is, depending on who you're with, a little bit girly, but it's cheap and fun in a giggly, youthful sort of way. It's a 22-year-old and behaves like one, with its modern mechanicals, cheap and simple soft top and its sprightly but not scary handling meaning the joys of driving one is accessible to just about everyone.

The MK1 version is usefully more delicated than the ones that followed and yet tougher than the sports cars of the MGB's generation, which is why it's not surprising that it's the best selling sports car of all time. As a sports car recipe, I don't think it's ever been bettered.

But... but... it's the MGB that gives me the bigger buzz. Driving it - in fact, doing anything with it - is like ordering a pint of Adnams Tally Ho on a night out, which might mark you out as a bearded real ale enthusiast to the casual observer but has an ineffable depth of character the alcopop just doesn't. It is a car you describe not with figures and statistics, but with the carefully-chosen phrases best known to Observer wine critics.

The Mazda is, I think, tomorrow's must-have classic because it's more fun more of the time than the MG, firing faithfully into life day after day before dancing deftfully from corner to corner wherever you go. The MGB, with its carburettors which constantly demand your attention and its heavy steering and ocean liner handling, is rubbish by comparision.

But it looks and sounds like a proper sports car of the old school where the MX-5 doesn't, and paradoxically I prefer it because it's slightly worse.

I'll take both.

Why I love mild winters

THIS TIME last year the last place you'll have found me was behind the wheel of a classic car.

Winter is cold, wet, slippy and salty, which is exactly why you wouldn't want to venture out in a forty-year-old sports car crafted by the hands of British Leyland. But where last year there was gritting there's now grey skies and drizzle, so tonight I roused the MGB from hibernation and took it to the pub.

It is the polar opposite of the MX-5 which competes for my love and attention. It isn't a masterclass through the corners and nor is it especially fast, but it makes a wonderful noise as it burbles down the back roads.

But to understand why I love it you just have to look at this night shot I took earlier; it is, for want of a better word gorgeous. With perfect proportions, lashings of chrome and the right stance, it's a British sports car to be proud of.

I just hope there isn't a cold snap on the way.

Video: MGB GT

I COULDN'T help but smile when one my favourite cars - my 1972 MGB GT - got some fan mail earlier today.

The car's previous owners sent an email to The Champion office to let me know they regularly read the updates on a thoroughly traditional and very British sports car I've been proud to own for the last 18 months, and it's for them that I include a video of the car in action.

An extract from their email reads:

Mr Simister,

You will be surprised, and I hope, pleased to learn that we follow your reports of "our" MGB and have compiled an archive simply because we are delighted that you gain so much pleasure from the car.I could not have wished for a better outcome; passing the car to someone who is really thrilled to own it.

Our friends look out for it and report "sightings". The previous owner, Alison, thinks we are mad...........but then she did not have the car as part of the family for 20 years!!

To which I've replied...


Thanks for your kind email and hope you had a good Christmas and an enjoyable New Year.

I'm delighted that you're still following the progress on the MGB. I am, as I'm sure you've probably gathered, absolutely smitten with it. Since its return to the road it's been on numerous runs into the West Lancashire countryside and was an entrant into the Ormskirk MotorFest last August; at the moment it's being treated to a new exhaust, fuel tank and stereo system, but when it comes out of winter hibernation one of my aims is to take it on the official MGB 50th anniversary run in Gaydon this April.

I'll have a look for a back copy of the magazine for you but in the meantime I'm happy to enclose a copy of the video, which I filmed a few weeks ago (before I fitted the new exhaust, incidentally). The video can be seen here:

The MGB will be back on the road once the sun comes out again, so I'm sure your friends will report plenty more sightings in the coming weeks!

More updates on Bridget, as I call her, to follow soon...

Sixties style, Teenies tech

IT'S nice to think that when people go onto West Lancashire Borough Council's website to sort out their council tax, they might well be granted with this wonderfully evocative image featuring my very own MGB GT.

I only discovered this poignant picture of MGs from years gone by the other day when I was checking a possible Champion story out but I'll let you into a little secret; I haven't actually driven the bumble B much since that sunny Bank Holiday weekend. In fact, it's been holed up in a garage since then, undergoing a series of subtle but hugely beneficial upgrades.

First off, it's been treated to a much newer and less holey tailgate, which should do wonders in preventing the small lake which lives in the boot appearing every time it rains. Until it's finished I've been limited to taking the MGB out on days when I know it isn't going to rain, which with it being Britain means I've taken it out twice in the past month. It's frustrating, but my luggage will thank me for it!

Another essential bit of kit Santa's brought early is a new fuel tank which - trust me - isn't as dull as it sounds. My biggest bugbear with the BGT is that thanks to having the original fuel tank it suffers with the same problem as every other fortysomething smoker; its lungs are filled with muck, so it coughs and splutters if you ask it go for a run. A new fuel tank means not only less time coughing and spluttering at the side of the road but should actually mean it'll be able to dump more fuel into its two enormous carburettors, more of the time. Which'll make it faster.

But what I'm really looking forward to is the new stereo I've just had fitted to it, which moves the MGB's in car entertainment from a very stodgy Pioneer radio job from the early Eighties straight through to the very latest MP3-ready, USB compatible, digitally futuristic job I could afford. Get this; it's a a 1972 car with a DVD player!


This immediately begs two questions.

Should a 40-year-old classic have such a defiantly modern stereo? Admittedly, I did agonise over whether to fit a retro stereo, but decided against it because a) they're expensive, b) life is too short for a shoddy Seventies eight track stereo and c) the old stereo wasn't the original anyway, so I figured fitting an even newer one wasn't about to dent its originality. I'm sure the purists will sneer at classic car shows, but that'll be twice a year. Enjoying the right accoustics, on the other hand, is an everyday delight.

Do I need a car stereo with an inbuilt DVD player? I've tried to kid everyone that it's to keep me entertained on camping trips but the answer's a tad simpler than that; I am male, and all men love needless gadgets, especially ones in MG-style retro packaging. If I had enough time and expertise I'd build the world's first WiFi-equipped MGB, brimmed with weapons grade technology and gadgets that'd give a Porsche 959 a run for its money.

Which the leaky tailgate would immediately ruin...

My Ormskirk MotorFest lap

A FERRARI Enzo, a Frogeye Sprite, a brace of E-Types and a Noble with a Boeing-esque wing on the back.



It's not often you get to keep pace with such an eclectic collection of sports cars, and certainly not on Ormskirk's one-way system. Luckily, I have a 40-year-old MG that's more than up to the task.



If you were at last Sunday's Ormskirk MotorFest, you'll probably know by now it wasn't just a success in a vague, it-wasn't-a-flop sort of way. By noon, both the town centre and Coronation Park were swarming with people, and not just the usual bunch of sad petrolheads (i.e: me) either. Maybe it was the cast of cars and bikes that'd turned up or the unexpected sunshine, but something about seemed to capture the imagination of thousands of visitors.



I loved milling around all the old Triumphs (two and four wheeled) but I was also lucky enough to get a perspective few other visitors got; I actually got to drive the closed one-way streets in a classic car. A classic car that had encountered two different breakdowns less than a fortnight earlier. Boy, was I nervous.



Yet once I'd crawled out of Coronation Park and got onto the streets, the nerves faded away. Here I was in the event's only MGB GT, with the full-length sunroof open, cruising past streams of excited children asking their parents what all these strange old cars were. They absolutely loved it.



I've seen a couple of clips on YouTube since and seen what the thousands of visitors saw; a crisp Seventies GT car, burbling around Ormskirk with the sun bouncing off the chrome and the deep, throaty exhaust ricocheting off the shop front windows. Then again, I was out of the MG just in time to see the F1 cars and the superbikes strutting their stuff, and they sounded epic. The scream of the Saudia Williams as it scorched past the parish church is one I'll never forget.



I'm lucky enough to have experienced Ormskirk's MotorFest on several different levels; as a participant, as a visitor, and as a journalist covering it for The Champion. I'd like to use what little influence I have with this column to make a plea to Aintree Circuit Club and West Lancashire Borough Council on behalf of everyone who enjoyed it.



Please, please do it again...

Woodvale Rally: The Champion page and details of the military procession

TWO of the cars from the Life On Cars garage - the MGB GT and the Mini - will be appearing at this year's Woodvale Rally.

This mock-up front page of The Southport Champion, which the printed column appears in, will also greet visitors during the event, so if you're going to be sure to keep a close eye out for the cars. There'll also be updates tomorrow and on Saturday and Sunday from the rally venue itself.

To read the story in full, just click above or below:

Open publication - Free publishing - More cars

In other news, dozens of military machines will rumble into Southport town centre this weekend - but don't worry, it's not an invading army!

The procession, which will include more than 30 vehicles and arrive on Lord Street on Saturday evening (August 6), will be comprised of entrants into this year's Woodvale Rally, which takes place throughout this weekend at RAF Woodvale.

The road run, which will take approximately one hour, will take in Liverpool Road, Waterloo Road to the beginning of Lord Street, before turning back towards the Woodvale Rally venue along the same route. Due to the machinery taking part, the procession is expected to be slow moving.

Police have recommended that motorists use the Coastal Road as an alternative route for those wishing to get into Southport without being delayed by the procession.

For more updates from the Woodvale Rally check out the Champion's motoring blog this weekend at www.lifeoncars.blogspot.com

Proof that summer has finally arrived...

Taken last night outside the rather quaint Hesketh Arms in Churchtown, in Southport.

That is all.