MGB – Foe or Friend?
Rotten Sills – Rotten Sellers
Three new young 1020ers approached us in February 2007 – all had bought MGBs with rotten sills and all needed rebuilds. Such a shame they came to 1020 after they’d bought their cars… they could have bought good ones from good honest 1020ers if only they’d approached us first…
Having said that, a further development would have me tearing my hair out if I had any…
A new young 1020er bought his MGB Roadster from Yorkshire on e-Bay and that car also needed new sills. Then I had a call from a chap in Yorkshire who said he’d bought a BGT with rotten sills from the South Coast (Chichester) and asked me for a company down here to fix it. You couldn’t make it up. Shame he didn’t buy our guy’s MGB and our guy had bought his, it would have saved a lot of trailer work.
The MG Owners’ Club has been here since 1973 to help you, it’s a pity that we still come on the scene too late for so many.
Phenomena come along every generation and they change our lives. The telephone is a good example, in all its guises from wind-up to breeze block battery powered ‘mobile’ to micro camera Internet ready Star Trek comms device. This is what is so refreshingly low tech about our pre-1980 MGs.
When Pierre Omidyar established e-Bay, that worldwide Internet based trading forum in 1995 (the ‘e’ stands for ‘Echo’ by the way) little did we expect our ‘exchange and mart’ mindsets and trading capabilities would be changed so radically.
Those who know me will readily testify that I am proud to be a techno dinosaur and still cling to the hope that cassette tapes and VHS will never disappear and I am being proved right with my vinyl record collection. I have always nurtured my distrust of most aspects of the internet and if vendors can call a car ‘Condition 1’ and included a picture of someone else’s MG (yes, someone did ask to put his MG’s number plate on my B Roadster for the ‘For Sale’ photo) when it’s really a couple of grades lower in reality, how can the Wild West universe of fantasy of the internet and the global electronic market place of e-Bay be any different? As they used to say about a throbbing disco I attended in the late 1970s, with the Internet and e-Bay, “All human life is there”.
Trust Me
This is basically what everyone is saying in an ‘advert’. Certainly, Curriculum Vitae are nowadays more and more regularly exposed as flights of fancy and shamelessly constructively enhanced, but employer beware, and should all qualifications and claims of ‘experience’ not be checked? The blind trust so many place in e-Bay adverts would fill a new tome on human psychology. If no-one in, say, Bradford, wants a particular MG then why should it be so ‘must have’ for someone in Bournemouth or Poole? A ‘fully restored’ MGB Roadster in Wales for £3,500? Not possible and why does no-one in Wales want it? Yes, two tanks of petrol wasted on a fruitless journey to see a fibbing vendor and to view an impossible bargain. It’s all about ‘the thrill of the chase’, isn’t it?
I told him not to go.
The Second Part
My previous article “Friend or Foe” reported the shock of a £5k MGB needing £7k worth of ‘rectification’ and the struggles to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. This piece is parallel in its thinking but not as conclusive as I personally would have expected. As e-Bay now dominates many people’s waking moments, bids fly around the world and bargains are frantically sought. My favourite line in the movie Casablanca is, as the smooth operator lifts the guy’s wallet out of his pocket, “Beware, vultures, vultures everywhere”. This must be the self-preservational mindset I would advise everyone to adopt when bidding on line. And yet, so many argue with me that the Internet is populated and utilised by Honest John traders.
eBay Virgin Me
Well, I have bought some macho Hornsea crockery through a friend who is truly an e-Bay operator and, as when my son dipped his trading toe into the pond via his keyboard, the postage cost more than the item(s) sold. I, however, did get a bargain and secured my heart’s desire. Lucky me. But, would I buy a car over the Internet? Agree to purchase a vehicle I could not see? The successful bidder is expected to pay up; “it’s your car now, Mate!” is usually the opening verbal volley when hesitation creeps in during real time encounters in the vendor’s drive. There is an unwritten code of honesty and a self-regulatory sense of honour among most e-Bay habitués but this, surely, must make it easier for ‘the vultures’ to operate? Am I too cynical?
I Can Get It Cheaper
We all have a friend who would maintain this claim until his last breath. My neighbour is no exception. I steered a Bournemouth & Poole MGOC member’s MGF his way for his son and I was aghast at how little he secured it for. He then stated he was ‘going to buy a classic on e-Bay and do it up’. I was sceptical. Sure enough, a red Triumph Spitfire (not my favourite car) arrived in his drive and within nine months of tinkering and preening, he sold it for a profit on e-Bay and moved on to his next project. (We lost another ‘1020’ member who deserted the teaching profession to make a living dealing in e-Bay scooters from a barn in Wales and he, as they say, has never looked back).
My neighbour’s next venture was the ubiquitous MGB Roadster. It looked great but sounded awful. The 1950cc engine sucked more than it blew and the leather seats cosseted the driver and he struggled under the (walnut boarded) dash for so many rogue wires. But, would you believe it, he’d bought it for less than the Spitfire he’d sold and it was (of course) a much better sportscar. The guy who bought it off him, again, on e-Bay, still keeps in touch as his latest venture, a TR6, changes from white to black and the less-than-triumphant fuel injection flatters to deceive.
The TR6 is financially more demanding but even I have to admit it’s now looking good and the great news is his next project is an MGC Roadster.
Have I Undone My Own Argument?
For those whose eyelids are now heavy, what am I trying to prove? You can be astute, you can be lucky, you can be willing to allow yourself to get burned all for the adrenaline thrill of clinching a bargain needle in an ethereal electronic haystack. Like our old cat when she trotted in with a bird, it must have been because it fell on her head stone dead. I know if I tried to buy an MG on e-Bay, it would be a ‘hybrid’ that would baffle any Haynes manual. Like Football Club Chairmen, you secure a small fortune by starting with a large fortune and expecting eleven men to kick a ball for you; natural cynics like me deserve what they get. Fortune favours the brave? It looks like it does on e-Bay. Personally, I’d rather buy an MG from a member of the local MGOC and talk to other members who’ve seen it and heard it running on the road in varied conditions on Club events.
Be Alert
What? An MG SV for a few grand? It’s a pre-prototype shell that’s been crashed twice with no engine. A Rembrandt for a few hundred pounds? It’s an oleograph, of course. Our MGOC network sees members e-mailing leads and bargains 24 hours a day as they scour the e-Bay listings, shunning sleep and imperilling their marriages. In fact, some MGOCers have become Octagonal Crusaders of Honesty as “David Jason’s MGB Roadster” and “Valerie Singleton’s MGB GT” are posted for sale. As the editor of Enjoying MG said to me, if the star of Only Fools and Horses had owned a MG, then surely we all would have known about it before now. The vendor, when pressed to produce the necessary provenance got very shirty. But just one picture of the much loved actor with his sportscar would have dispelled our doubts. Equally, we ALL know BBC’s Blue Peter presenter Val Singleton owned a white 1977 MGB Roadster from new and it was advertised for restoration in Enjoying MG before being put up for auction (where is it now and is it finished?). She owned an early roadster previously but NEVER a GT. Is the jury still out on e-Bay? I engrave so much ‘Tiffany’ jewellery that has cost a third of the genuine articles that they all can’t be ‘unwanted Christmas presents’. Is an ‘unwanted Christmas present’ waiting for you on e-Bay?
If you know of anyone thinking of buying an MG do remind them that they can get help and advice from the MGOC Technical Support Helpline 01954 234003.
Nigel Hedges Area Secretary Bournemouth & Poole MG Owners’ Club