These models are among several MG Bs I bought. There is something about them especially pleasing to my eye. Both are a little darker than the ones I had; in fact the GT was a blue that is close to the blue of my roadster, or "Tourer" if you want to be MGically Correct. The GT has a page of its own, and the photo there shows a gray close to the Grampian of the real thing. I'm not sure I'll be able to put up a picture that shows the Tourer's color.

The MG patch with a black border is said to be of the type worn by dealership mechanics.

I have two or three copies of the blue B GT. They were common when I started looking, and not expensive. I dismantled one and painted its red interior black and its blue exterior gray. It had details cast in the roof and painted to give the appearance of a canvas "sun roof". It took a bunch of filing to smooth it over. The "Minilite" mag wheels I added make it look very nice, just like the Panasports on the original.

The Tourer model in that top picture is a little more expensive and detailed, and is much darker than the one I drove. I have two or three cheaper blue ones, a little lighter, suitable for detailing with racing numbers and rollover bar. So far the cut-down windscreen, better-looking wheels from the GT replacing cheap-o originals, and fluorescent chin are showing well. I think coathanger wire will scale properly as a rollover bar, but I haven't found a decals source yet. And that front bumper, integrated with the grill, is still a problem.

  

I can muster more than two dozen MG models. That makes a nice picture (there are five or six more Bs and a few T-models that didn't make it into this shot).

I won an eBay auction of what is purported to be an RAE (a maker similar to K&R, but without a Web Presence) (that I know of) model of an MG B Roadster, from a Swiss seller, for a fraction of the order price. OK, a big fraction, but still . . .  It hasn't been delivered yet. We'll see. It looks good in the picture. Bad news: it arrived broken and sad. It seems as if it would be good if it were not coming apart.

"To the MOON, Alice". Just a way to introduce the idea that the gray GT has travelled somewhere near a quarter-million miles, roughly the distance from Earth to Moon. I had that car for just a year or two, long enough to break it in carefully and thoroughly, come close to a couple of wins in the Showroom Stock slalom category (I found results in Gridlines showing I was a consistent third or fourth in class "Y" with times apparently too embarrassing to contrast with those published for the winners; however I did "catch fire" to take second in one event, and actually win the class once, for sure ! ), race it at Tijuana and make one joyous, adventureful trip to Guaymas, Sonora, Mexico.

By coincidence, about the time I was deciding I needed a substantial car to tow the roadster to races, sister Sandy needed a car to wear to college at USC. Dad bought the GT for her, and I shopped until the Dodge Dart 2-door hardtop, 273 V-8 2-barrel carburetor, auto transmission, power steering, medium metallic blue repaint over a lighter blue, came to match the template, more or less. Here's one for you: I forgot about it, didn't include it on the Missing Cars list. I'll fix that. Done.

Sandy drove the GT for several years, to and fro, hither and yon, San Bernardino and Los Angeles, Anaheim, Azusa and Cuc Amonga. One season she went to most of the sports car races in the Western United States. Then she found a situation in San Diego. And a Lotus Elan.

By coincidence, she had the Lotus urge at about the same time Dad took the Ventura College job. He had a condo in Ventura and a home in Redlands, spent weeknights in the coastal city, weekends on the edge of the desert. He put a lot of miles on GT, and escorted it through its middle, or rebuild-darn-near-everything, years.

On one occasion his trusted local Redlands mechanic told him he needed a new cylinder head. I got one through an in-law of a friend. It was one of the few decent MG B non-smog plumbing heads left in the world. It was from a seldom-used wreck, and hadn't ever even had the seats faced. I paid a good price for it, and carried it off to Dad. A few days later he called to say the mechanic had told him the head was no good, was cracked, had the seats sunk so deep they couldn't be recovered.

That didn't sound at all like the head I had left with him. I went and picked it up, and took it back to the seller. He glanced at it and said it was not the head he had sold me. I remembered he had used a stamp to mark the head before he handed it over to me. The head I took back was not marked. I told Dad he had been robbed. You can bet the thief sold it for three times what I paid. It still angries my blood to think of this.

MTK

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