This entry is our first international contribution from a longtime friend of the Renners and the HMGCC. Composed especially for this time…

MGBGT PPE

Corona Competitionentry, week 5

By Angus Jamieson, Inverness, Scotland

If you have to buy a British Car

The Rolls Royce is the nicest

But the old MG is the best by far

For such a time of crisis.

We could buy a flashy vehicle

So that others would admire us

But the MG is a miracle

That deters Corona Virus.

 

A mask might be protective

Or some other PPE

But there’s nothing as effective

As an MGBGT.

It’s the perfect safe environment

A compact sterile bubble

That keeps those in retirement

From every kind of trouble.

 

I asked the guy at AVIS

Why he rented MGBs

And the reason that he gave us

Was very plain to see,

“The reason people hire us

Is there’s very little room

And the poor Corona Virus

Can’t survive the petrol fumes.”

 

When it comes to social distancing

No matter where you are

With the guidelines there’s consistency

By staying in your car.

You can tell police inquisitors

That your wife and you complied

For there’s no room left for visitors

By the time you’re both inside.

 

If your state has driving limits

And you can’t exceed your quota

In an MGB in minutes

You could drive to North Dakota.

And if the cops seek vengeance

(You’re the type they keep their eyes on)

By the time they start their engines

You’ll be over the horizon.

 

So you took a good decision

When you bought a small MG

Though you’re subject to derision

From the ones that cannot see

That as they sit there in their Cadillac

All elegant and posh

That crowd of passengers in the back

Are among the great unwashed.

 

Week 4’s winner is….

                              Ed Rosenquist

DAMN IT

Corona Competitionentry, week 4

By Ed Rosenquist 

This story begins in 1969 when I was transferred from St. Louis to New York City. Kaye and I found home in Connecticut and I planned to commute to the City on the old New Haven Railroad. This required Kaye, along with our one year old son, to drive me to the train station in our only car every morning and then pick me up in the evening. This was especially trying since, in the evening, the train could be one to two hours late with no notification. The train station closed in the afternoon and cell phones didn’t exist then. It quickly become apparent that we had to get a second car. As the trip was only three miles and I had always wanted an MG TF, that was going to be my station car.

I found a TF in New Jersey for $1100. The car had been driven hard and left outside under a tarp. It was in bad shape and the lights were not in good working order. After spending most of a weekend getting the lights working, Kaye took the car to the state inspection station to get it registered. I asked her to stop about a block before the station and check that the lights were still working. If a light was stubborn, she was to just tap on the fender and it would come on. Of course she didn’t do that, but instead just pulled into the station and, when one of the lights was out, asked the inspector to tap the fender. Much to my surprise he did tap on the fender, the lights all came on and the inspector passed the car with the advice, “Have your husband work on this car.” This was my wife’s first frustration with the TF and not the last.

A couple of weeks later after tracking down most of the TF’s problems, we went on a Sunday afternoon drive. The car ran out of gas on the Merritt Parkway. Someone gave me a ride to a gas station and, when I returned with a can of gas, I found Kaye and our son sitting on a hill next to the very busy Parkway, looking perturbed. Over the next two years living in Connecticut there were many similar incidents, but they happened at the train station and fortunately didn’t involve Kaye. A typical comment from commuters was, “I owned one of those damn cars. Let me let help you get on the road.”

The story doesn’t end in Connecticut. In 1970 I was transferred to Houston, where I later joined the Houston MG Car Club, and then in 1973 returned to St. Louis. In Houston I was in a car pool and the TF was driven only on weekends. Back in St. Louis, however, I needed to drive our only reliable car to work since it was 45 miles from home. And here is where Kaye and the TF created more fond memories. We now had two children and Kaye was eight months pregnant. One day she needed go to the grocery store so she piled the two kids into the TF. After shopping, the car wouldn’t start. She called me at work and, knowing the battery terminals were a little corroded, I suggested she take off a shoe and tap the terminals. You can imagine her response, and some kind soul offered her a ride home. When I got home we retrieved the car from the grocery store parking lot. Tapping on the terminals did get the car started.

Two weeks later Kaye got adventurous again, piled the kids back into the car and went off to the grocery store. Once again, the car would not start after shopping. This time when she described the problem to me over the phone, I realized the starter wouldn’t engage. Even though the TF was parked on a hill, she declined to start the car by rolling it down the hill. That weekend we went out and bought a second reliable car.

From this you can understand how the poor little TF got its nickname DAMN IT. The story doesn’t end here. A few weeks later Kaye parked the TF out in the driveway and put a FOR SALE sign on the windshield. Despite living on a quiet street, within a couple of hours someone stopped to inquire about the car. Kaye was totally baffled that anyone would be interested in DAMN IT.

Today we still own that same car, and it has gone through two total restorations.

The 2020 Houston MG Car Club Spring Thing, originally scheduled for April 18th, has been cancelled and will not be rescheduled.  All registered attendees have been contacted by email to make arrangements for receiving a refund or to donate the registration fee to the club to support future events and activities.  

Just think of the hours of fun, you too can have, with your own Renner cartoon.  All it takes is a winning article in the Covid-19 Roars competition.  

Artwork courtesy of Dave Renner and Dwight Dawson.

Safety fast!

Mike.

This week’s winner is….

                                     Dwight Dawson!

No Cure for the LBC Bug

Corona Competition entry, week 3

By Dwight Dawson

Like most everyone else in Covid America today, I have lots of time to recall important moments from my past.

When I was 20, my future father-in-law, the car dealer, gave me an opportunity to “test drive” one of his trade-ins, with his daughter as a ride-along. It was the low-slung Austin Healey blue and white that we took out. The most memorable moment was at a road-side eatery not far from home, where I managed get the sleek roadster high-centered in the parking lot. Fortunately, all I had to do was step out of the car to un-weight it and roll it a few feet. A nice ride, but what did I know..?  I never owned a car until I was 21. I certainly could not afford this one.

My next exposure to little British sports cars was at the end of Christmas break in 1968 as we traveled the 400 miles east back to Washington State University. On the top of Snoqualmie Pass in Washington State, it was snowing but the road was just messy flying road-slush. Passing on our left in the fast lane was a yellow sportster with the TOP DOWN. The clowns in the two-seater were having a GREAT time by appearances.  The car was an MGB. On that same mountain pass just a few weeks earlier I also had been attracted to a new Lotus in the ski area car park.

Back on campus, a fraternity brother had a late model Jaguar XKE. When he showed me its speed on the straight road between Moscow, Idaho and Washington, I was once again smitten. At a senior year event on the Snake River in May, another fraternity brother introduced me to the 8 cylinders of his Sunbeam Tiger. Now I was a goner. 

I graduated in 1969 and started my first career position in Casper, Wyoming. In August I married my co-pilot Merry Candace. While we had been pleased with our noisy yellow 1969 Toyota Corona with special wheels, 4 speed on the floor and a wood trim steering wheel, another temptation emerged. The father-in-law recognized that his daughter and I had jobs and both needed transportation. After a visit to our home town, we drove a very fun, bright red 1967 Triumph Spitfire from the dealership on Fidalgo Island in Washington to windy Casper, Wyoming. “Dad” insisted on a roll-bar, and who could argue? With the wires on the Spitfire, I learned quickly about the importance of keeping the wheel nuts tight, and what happens to hub splines if you get lazy. A wheel did not leave the car, but it could have.

A year later, I accepted a new job in Columbus, Ohio. Both the Toyota and the Triumph made the trip comfortably in the moving van. While we were still apartment-dwellers, the Spitfire started making worrisome noises in its back end. Young and stupid, we sold a perfectly good sports car because of a simple worn u-joint.  After several months of regret, a new possibility emerged. Candy worked with a salesman at Borg-Warner who had purchased a beautiful 1973 Blaze MGB. She told him that if he ever wanted to sell it, we wanted it. A year later in 1974, the original MGB owner got a company car and we took over his monthly payments for the Blaze. Wheee. Life has never been the same.

After household moves to Montana and Oklahoma, we again loaded the MGB in our last moving van for its trip to Houston, Texas in 1985. We finally became members of the Houston MG Club in 1992. In our first driving event, a gimmick rally run by current members Wayne and Dixie Moore, we won Third Place and it was another “hook” for MG-ness. At one point there were three Dawson MGBs on our driveway, including one that narrowly survived a high school parking lot. 

So, let there be no doubt. Once you have been bitten by the Little British Car bug, you can never go back. I’d like to hear your stories.

There has been talk about an encore road tour to Big Bend National Park.  

Here is a look at a couple of things that happened during that event in 1994. 

https://youtu.be/InbgsoOS7rY

 

Rallye Navigating Made Easy

Corona Competition entry, week 3

by Wayne Hardy

Way back in 2008, we took our little 1958 MG ZB Magnette sedan out to Waco, TX for the TMGR fall GOF. I hadn’t been to Waco in 30 years or more, so I was really looking forward to the event. A special treat for this outing was that Ms. Marilyn Lane, my car’s second owner would be joining us for the event. Ms. Lane’s father had been the original owner of this car. He purchased it new while stationed in England in the Navy, with every intention of bringing it back to the states after his tour there, hence the left-hand drive layout. After 10 years and 100,000 miles of ownership, her father had given her the car, as she always loved it, and it continued in her ownership for another 12 years. So the first 22 years of ownership of this little car were well accounted for. Marilyn even provided me with a couple of pictures from the day the car was purchased new, and her father picked up her and her sisters at school in England. So this was to be a somewhat special outing for our little car.

Among the planned GOF events was a self-timed and checked rallye on Friday afternoon—run it when you wish, you keep track of your times and identify landmarks as required to prove you ran the course, and time closest to the set time wins. Now, my wife can be a good road navigator when she wants to, having won trophies at previous GOFs navigating for Wayne Kube and Talley Bell in different outings. She was proud of this fact, too. This ”trophy winning” navigator decided that we needed to do the Friday driving event in order to show our out-of-state visitor some central Texas scenery, and to show off her navigating skills and let Marilyn enjoy her little car again.

Off we went, with me going exactly where the navigator said to go (the only way it works). Even though I had my doubts about some of the route, I kept being assured that we were under the guidance of a “Prize Winning Navigator,” so we pressed on with our nice little drive along the river on the edge of town. “Turn left, turn left,” said the navigator suddenly, even though I was looking at a sign that said this little side road goes to the Waco Zoo. “Go, don’t worry, I’m a prize winning navigator,” said our navigator, while our passenger and out-of-town guest just observed the whole affair. And suddenly, there we were in a nice grassy field, next to the parking lot for the zoo. The navigator flipped the page on her instructions sheet, and BINGO, we were on the display field for the Saturday morning car show, which was supposed to follow a little drive from the hotel to the show area. We’d just followed the Saturday directions to the display field, rather than the rallye route for Friday. We were on the wrong day at the wrong place. So we returned to the hotel, went to the beverage area and got a nice adult beverage—at least our guest and I did, while wife/prize winning navigator went and hid in the room for a while.

No harm done really, and we certainly were able to lead the way in the car convoy to the car display grounds the next morning. On top of this we won “Show Favorite” at the Saturday event, thanks in part I’m sure to Marilyn’s staying with the car all morning, telling everyone who ventured by all about my little car’s very earliest life adventures, complete with a couple of old photos from 1958 and later.

So much for prize winning navigators.

 

This week’s winner is….

                                                Roger Sykes!

A Mexican Honeymoon

Corona Competition entry, week 2

by Roger Sykes

Ironic that this competition should mime a Mexican beer, since this is a story about Mexico and another of its beers. In mid-May 1968, Kaye and I had been married less than a month. She was finishing her last semester at Texas Tech and I was waiting to be drafted. We had not had a proper honeymoon yet. Some friends were driving to Acapulco for vacation, so we decided to tag along--- in an un-air conditioned '67 MGB GT. We WERE young and crazy.

So off we went, Lubbock to Laredo in day one (try that today!), long before the advent of interstates. We spent the night at our friend's house in Laredo and crossed the border the next day. I carried a spare fan belt, a set of plugs and a couple of quarts of Castrol. There was not a single MG dealer in all of Mexico, so I was truly a trusting soul (or certifiable). Less than a hundred miles later the right front tire—a Gold Stripe Cinturato with less than 1000 miles on it—blew a quarter-sized hole though the sidewall. At $50 a pop, and having a perfectly good Dunlop Gold Seal spare, I had bought only four Cinturatos. You can imagine what the handling was like with 3 radials and 1 bias ply on the ground. We drove all the way through Monterrey without seeing a single tire store. Facing several hundred miles of nothing, we stopped in Saltillo at "Pedro's" tire store to replace the spare. It was while waiting to find anything that might fit that we discovered Tecate beer, in cans, with lime and salt on top.

At that time, Tecate was the only beer in Mexico in cans and it would not be exported to the US for many years to come. I don't recall (surprise) how many beers it took, but "Pedro" finally turned up with a 600-14 tire. While it fit the rim just fine, it did not fit the spare compartment designed for a 5.60-14. Swapping luggage with spare, off we went into the night to San Luis Potosi. Thanks to my Cibie driving lights, I did NOT run over a dead donkey occupying all of my lane.

The next day found us in downtown Mexico City with some of the crew down with The Revenge. After a couple of days in the worst heat wave the city had seen in years, we pushed on for Acapulco. You can imagine how happy the B was with heat, traffic and altitude, but we managed to get out of town before things got out of hand. About half way to Acapulco, Kaye had had all she could stand of the heat and transferred to the air conditioned Olds 442 that our friends were in. Well, alone in a sports car in the mountains, what's a fellow to do? I fell in behind a hard driven Opel Commodore (a model never imported to the States) and chased him for an hour or so. Remember the tires? Blind corners in open range country got very interesting. After a while, it was time to stop and let the 442 catch up. 45 minutes and several Tecates later, they finally showed up. Kaye was cool, but decidedly car-sick. Seems the 442, for all its vaunted performance, was not a car for corners.

When we got to Acapulco, we checked into an inexpensive downtown motel and went for a burger at Denny's. It would be many years before Kaye or I would ever darken a Denny's door again. One of our cheerful gang had to point out the dearth of stray dogs in the area. After a few days doing the tourist thing, our friends decided that they had had all the fun they could stand and left for home. 

Kaye and I were not done honeymooning and had just enough funds to do a week at the famed Las Brisas resort across the bay. It was truly a charming setting (probably is to this day) with individual casitas on a hillside dropping right into the bay. As there was not even the possibility of a beach, they built a salt water pool opening out into the bay, called La Concha. More Tecate beer and the chance meeting of a lifetime followed. While sharing a visit from the local parrot, we met another honeymooning couple from Houston. We spent most of the next few days with them, including my short but intense bout with The Revenge. Turns out she was a doctor's daughter and had come properly equipped. When we parted company, his last words to me were, "When you get out of the Army, call me. I'll have a job for you."

Our trip home was uneventful other than over-heating in Mexico City. The first English news we got in Laredo was that Bobby Kennedy had been assassinated. Even though we were both Republicans at the time, we drank most of our duty-free Chivas that night.

It’s a long story covering a short period of time, but I did not get drafted, so I called my new friend. Not only did he hire me then, but again six years later when both of us had moved on to new careers. We remain friends to this day, 52 years later.

I still like Tecate.

The intention of the Corona Competition is to stay connected during this time of no face-to-face meetings. As a further refinement to its “rules,” we encourage everyone who is interested to submit their stories about life with MGs and we welcome repeat submissions from all members. Depending on the number of entries at any given time, we may spread the posting of them out over more than one week so that we don’t find ourselves having to skip a week. Since there is a highly coveted cup awarded to the winner, we feel it is fair that only one cup will be presented per family. For any member who submits additional winning entries, the honor of recognition will be the reward, along with a cartoon illustrating the tale. We trust this will encourage many of you to participate. Let’s stay connected!

The editors