The Third Fourth: Choosing Our First British Sports Car, Part I

(Ron and Patty D’Aigle sent in a funny log of the trials they went through in obtaining and restoring their MGB GT, which was just too long to print in its entirety in Moss Motoring. In this issue, you’ll read Part I, which deals with finding their first British sports car. Look for the continuation of their story in our next issue —Ed.)

They called the color “flame orange” but nature was trying her best to reduce it to just plain orange. Correction—two-tone faded orange. You had to include the rust! Still it was beautiful.

March 8, 1982. Check #123 made out for one thousand two hundred dollars. About one thousand dollars too much for a rusty old MG but we wouldn’t know that for another eight thousand!

“Look all those buttons and lights”! My wife was big on buttons and lights. My comment was purely mechanical, down to-earth. “Geez, look at all those buttons and lights”! Boy, were we hooked!

It was a fatefully beautiful day, with the sun brilliant and the stage set for car buying. A used car salesman’s dream. Anything placed on a lawn under these conditions was as good as sold. I felt uncomfortable lying there on my stomach in the middle of some stranger’s driveway, but tried to look knowledgeable searching for anything that looked odd. As the guy, my birthright was supposed to have been some specific mechanical prowess. Fat chance! I had minimal knowledge at best.

I’d bombed around in a ’59 Pontiac Bonneville while in high school. A coral colored white-topped convertible with big, shiny silver knobs and buttons, leather scats and a massive trunk that was 8 feet across. The chrome bumpers were half the car! I’d once taken them off for one reason or another and when the last bolt was removed and the front bumper freed from its mountings, the car rose up at least four inches! The suspension system was a pneumatic miracle. It probably did less to enhance the ride than to hold up the bumpers! Once, while trying to be my own mechanic, I dropped the starter on my chin, almost knocking out my front teeth. I ask you, does this qualify me to inspect a vehicle and pronounce it fit for purchase? No! But I’d be damned if I was going to let Mrs. Archer, the owner of the MG, know this. There was also a problem with the lighting—I couldn’t see a thing. I bounced back to my feet proclaiming. “A couple hundred bucks and right back on the road”!

My wife, Patty, and I took turns sitting at the wheel. We looked into the engine compartment. Then we walked casually back to our rent-a-car feeling a surge of adrenaline, and tried to wave a very convincing “nice-car-but-sorry-we’re-just-not-interested” good-bye to Mrs. Archer. Mrs. Archer, on the other hand, hurried to phone Mr. Archer to tell him she’d just sold the little wreck.

How It Began

I didn’t want a car. I really didn’t want a car but Patty threatened to make my life miserable if we didn’t get one, and soon! We argued over the sports car that Patty could no longer live without. The rest of Sunday was spent with the New York Times automobile listings. The uninitiated’s Dread of Dreads. It’s an entire newspaper in itself.

The following Saturday found us in suburban New Jersey, driving a rented car, armed with gleanings from the Times. I just knew there was someone out there unscrupulous enough to embed his talons deep into our wallet and rip out a chunk of money. Though feeble, I kept up a resistance through the first and second cars. And even through the little stir I felt when I spied the purple Spitfire. The owner was a kid who had recently joined the military and was parting with his toy. “Get in and drive it,” he said smiling. The car was starting to get to me. He had miraculously squeezed a Six into it. I don’t know how. I just know that the true meaning of the word “streak” really hit home when I stomped on it. It was way too much engine. Even I knew that. This, and the loose body panels, and fluids that seemed to leak from everywhere in greater profusion than I thought mechanically allowable, dulled my interest. I begged off and pushed” on.

Ridgewood, New Jersey was our next destination. Fred MacMurray could have lived in Ridgewood. As well as the Beaver and Wally. It was that kind of place. Clean. Beautiful. The neighborhood in which “Baby” lived (her eventual name) had serenity this day. Serenity and an aura, and I was driving right into it! We turned onto the street and I looked at Patty for further directions but she was suffering from a severe case of rubberneck. “That’s got to be it”!The words exploded from her mouth and shot straight out at what her eyes were riveted to, taking me right along with them. I lost control of the rent-a-car. All of my attention was on what was parked in that driveway. The soft buffet caused by our tires scraping the curb brought me back. I’d long suspected Patty of dabbling in the occult but I’d look for a little wax man-doll seated behind the wheel of a tiny orange plastic car later when we returned to our apartment. Right now I had to drool a bit. Mrs. Archer greeted us as we walked toward the car. “You finally found us”! There was a giggle in her voice. Maybe she saw us hit the curb.

Inquisitive about who we were and what we did, Mrs. Archer interrogated Patty because I was incommunicado. I hovered ’round the car, salivating. Watching me, Mrs. Archer must have known she was about to unload it. Patty S. knew Mrs. Archer was about to unload it. But I was convinced that I hadn’t yet shown my cards. I could hear fate’s distant drone getting louder and louder all right, but as most males have to admit, I was the last to get the message. I busied myself with the courting ritual. I was being the consummate aficionado of fine wrecks. I labored with the bonnet a while and got it open. The meaning of foreign hit home hard right here. I wasn’t giving it away, or so I thought, but geesh, this was the weirdest assemblage of mechanical parts I’d ever seen. I knew the very basics, but only about American engines. This was very foreign. And there seemed to be so little of it!

Patty sensed my conclusion and yelled the dead giveaway across the yard “Well, how’s it look”? This telegraphed my absolute incompetence to Mrs. Archer and must have made her feel very happy that I wasn’t the repairman come to fix her washer. “Needs some work,” I replied. A stock comment, true, but one thrown out by mechanics the world over. You couldn’t read through it as easily. I turned my attention back to the car. Touché, Mrs. Archer!

Nervous and inattentive, I didn’t hear anything she said. All I knew was that my loot was on the clutch. I could turn the steering wheel and that I wanted her out of the window so I could go and play Stirling Moss! Writing this is somewhat embarrassing of course, but this is what I was thinking. Remember, I was not myself but a helpless subject, slave to Patty’s occult machinations.

Satisfied she’d straightened me out, Mrs. Archer pulled herself out of the window. But before I could back up I heard a loud tapping. My heart started to pound. “Please don’t let there be anything seriously wrong with this car, God”! The prayer over, Patty appeared before me a little at a time. She was lowering the bonnet that I’d left open in haste. Tapping on the fender to get my attention, she yelled to me through a smile. She had to yell to be heard over the whining engine. “I forgot, you had x-ray vision”!

Just as I’d daydreamed, I was hallway up the block, only this time it was for real. It was almost as if I’d never driven before. The car chugged a couple of times so I fooled with the choke, and it continued to chug. I looked for something else to fool with, came up dry, then just floored it! The vehicle jumped forward, slightly ahead of a gigantic blue cloud, the by product of a loud backfire. Thick smoke billowed in the rear view mirror, and obscured my view of Mrs. Archer, who was in Academy Award-winning form, parrying Patty’s startled look with, “They all do that when they haven’t been driven for a while”! Despite the thin bluish haze that was still visible at the other end of the block, I was in driver’s heaven. I turned around on the hill and coasted down. She coasted real good!

Once back in front of Mrs. Archer’s, I signaled for Patty to join me and off we went. The ecstatic sounds coming from the passenger side of the car were clear in meaning. “I want this”! Notice how quickly selflessness was thrown to the wind. “This is us”! This one was meant to hook me, as if I needed hooking. “Listen to it”! This I shared, and down the avenue and up the avenue and down…we went. It must have amused Mrs. Archer greatly because when we returned from our test drive, she could do little else but giggle. She could probably read the words I was broadcasting with my eyes, “Take my money, take my money”!

Neither the backfire, nor the fact that it ran on and on long after I’d turned the ignition off could sway me from this appointed round. Destiny was now my closest friend. And like a good close friend it was doing me a kindness. Nothing about this car rubbed me the wrong way. That I was in a deep trance was obvious. After returning from our test drive, in lieu of the fact that the car was in dire need of help (or junking), all that I could manage to utter was “Boy, is that British!”

We spent a bit more time with Mrs. Archer then bade her farewell. She in turn waved good-bye, which to her was code for “Abientot, and bring the correct amount when you return, you future sports car owners, you”!

The line wasn’t busy. And even though I knew it was Mrs. Archer who answered, I asked stupidly, “May I speak to Mrs. Archer”? Having only met me once, but obviously feeling a stronger bond, she replied “Ron”! It worked, and I relaxed. All my theories on how to bargain for a better price went right out the window and the next thing I knew I was back inside the car with Patty. “We just bought you a car.” I placed as much emphasis as I could on “you”. It was too much. And that little comment set the tone for the drive back to the city.

As per Patty’s diary entry of March 8th, the day we picked up the car: “We picked up the car today. I think we were both over-excited and got a bit picky on the bus. But the car was worth the trip—it’s a beauty. It’s a little rusty and the engine needs some TLC, but it’s ours! And Ronnie can fix it all up good as new. We sure had fun tonight zipping around north Jersey”.

The first of many hurdles were the inspections. Pluralized because it took a couple to clear up all of the infractions. One in particular involved the back up lights. Unbeknownst to us, they’d been sticking on for sometime. They caused me to become the afternoon’s entertainment at the ole’ inspection station. As I pulled up to the next in line position, I watched the inspector scrutinize the car in front of me all too carefully. My hopes of his not being quite with it and rapidly OKing Baby were dashed. “This guy’s being much too thorough” was the general sentiment there, amid the ranks of the uninspected. He waved Baby and I in. She looked adolescent compared to all the other adult-sized automobiles that surrounded her. There were then still quite a few “Big Bombs” on the road, and these were the cars that mostly filled the inspection ranks that day. All went well until the inspector asked me to get out of the car.

He was quite a tall man, and found cramming himself into the driver’s seat to be quite a task. He checked out the parking brake and lights. Then surprisingly, he floored it, shot forward a few yards and jammed on the brakes. I closed my eyes hoping he’d be satisfied with its stopping ability. MGs are not known for their keen brakes. When I opened my eyes, the tail lamps were on, but so were the back up lights. He was standing beside the car, shaking his head in disapproval. I joined him. and with a lump in my throat asked if the car had passed. He continued to shake his head. “Why”? I asked dumbly. “Look…” he pointed overhead and to the rear of the car. Looking up, I thought I might find God himself ruling over the entire proceeding, and signaling thumbs down. There was no deity. Just a large saucer-shaped mirror. A tool pigeon in a mirror suit! In a last ditch effort to right things I jumped into the car and moved it forward, then back, then forward again, hoping to jounce the lights off.Then I jumped back out, totally disoriented, and shot to the front of the car where there were no back up lights, to point and plead, and maybe rip a little compassion out of the resolute inspector. I wanted very much to be inspected and out of there. So I yelled in desperation, to be heard over the welter of discordant engine sounds, “This is the way they do it in England”! And the yelling was amplified within the metal carport that formed the mass-inspection station. All eyes and ears were now on me. The inspector held firm to his final decision. And with resolve and holding back a huge laugh bubble that threatened to burst in his throat, he chortled “It is, huh”? That was the end of that. Totally dejected, I got into Baby and sped down the highway, tail between my backup lights!

We now knew the unadulterated meaning of sports car. And we were ever loyal. We were also calloused from the innuendos. “So you own a sports car, huh? That means you carry a tool box around with ya all the time,doesn’t it?””Pass anything on the road but a mechanic!” Counter persons also amused themselves. Behind glaring eyes, they’d say, “Must be foreign, we only carry domestic. You won’t find metric here!” At first, I shared in the humor. But eventually it wore thin. Especially when you consider my euphoric frame of mind at that time. Most sports car owners I knew would anxiously await their day off, in anticipation of a visit to the foreign auto parts store, so they could sift through some vast selection of auto-related stuff. They, like myself, would bounce around the store and effervesce all over the place. But when’s the last time you witnessed anyone bouncing into a domestic parts place to joyously ask for something? Therein must lie the answer. Sports cars have a built-in thrill. A kind of nimbus. Probably sprayed on at the factory!

By Patty & Ron D’Aigle