Back in the day I went through an MGB, a Spitfire, and a TR-3, the latter two being Triumphs. Those cars had souls of their own.
The had everything wrong with them for use as reliable transportation and the TR-3 even had a hand crank in the boot to start it with when to Prince of Darkness Lucas Electrics decided that it was their turn to torment the owners.
The engines usually needed a rebuild at about 80,000 miles if they lasted that long. The were uncomfortable as hell, sprung stiffly and rode horribly. They were totally miserable on long trips.
There were no creature comforts. When the heaters ran which was seldom they provided little if any heat in the winter and utterly no defrost. Savvy drivers carried a squeegee to keep the windshield from fogging up. They were also terrible in snow.
They were crude, simple pushrod engine machines which was actually a part of the joy of having one.
The owner's manuals explained how to adjust the valves and the twin SU semi down draught carburetters (Carburetors) to draw air evenly.
(Modern manuals tell you not to drink the battery acid)
There was one reason and only one reason to own one and it's because they were so much damned fun to drive. While they were not fast by any means, they were quick nimble machines that required the driver to do it all themselves. The driver had to do all the operations themselves. They had to actually drive the car.
Of course the gearheads of the time were busying themselves souping up American cars with huge V-8 that could leave two black lines of rubber from here to the horizon. The sports car people only had smaller 4 cylinder engines and were not anywhere nearly as fast on the straightaways. It was on the curves where they excelled.
There's still a saying to this day that straight lines are for fast cars and that curves are for fast drivers. There's more than a kernel of truth to it. Those cars could handle the curves.
Most savvy gearheads knew this and understood it. Occasionally some cocky dumbass would insist his V-8 behemoth that spit fire could not be beat under any circumstances.
Personally I showed two people otherwise, leaving one in a snowbank and the other in a vacant lot as they failed to negotiate the curve I had just scorched through. One was a V-8 family car which really doesn't count. He wound up in a snowbank. The 4 guys in the car spent most of the night getting it out of the ditch, IIRC.
The other one was a Shelby GT-500 KR with a 429 in it. To be truthful, had if been a GT 350 they might have had a chance. Both of these were a Ford/Carrol Shelby creation. The 500 tended to be a bit nose heavy. The 500KR was a fire spewing monster when it left Detroit. I left the Shelby in a freshly cleared vacant lot behind me madder than a wet hornet because he needed a tow and that meant his rich daddy would find out about it and probably ground him.
Both times I didn't stop. In the first case the car had 4 pissed off guys in it. In the second the guy was bigger than me and I wasn't stupid enough to stop and try to help.
Of course at the time personal responsibility was even back then on the wane. Both of them had the "look at what you made me do" attitude even though they had been the challengers. I had simply laid out the terms...and won.
For quite a while the Brits pretty much had a monopoly on those two hole sports cars. There were cars they made that were even smaller than the MGB. There was the MG Midget and the Austin Healey Sprite for example. One model Sprite is well known as the 'bug-eyed Sprite because of it's headlights being mounted high on the hood.
The last MGB left the British Leyland works in 1980 and that left a vacuum for these little cars. They continued to be held together with spit, bailing wire for quite some time until the Japanese saw the vacuum and entered it with the MX-5 Miata.
Needless to say, with Japanese engineering and bulletproof Japanese engines capable of running well over 200+K miles and sometimes 300K miles.
The Japanese had it down to a T with the NA generation of Miatas. They were identical in driving as the old British counterparts were except they were reliable as hell and actually had heaters that worked. They got the wind in the hair, bugs in the teeth driving style down pat. In fact they even got most of the uncomfortable and cramped part right.
They had done a near perfect job of duplicating the heart and soul of the Old School British sports car.
Introduced in 1989 and sold in 1990 sales took off. They sold well and for a while they couldn't keep up with American orders.
In 1999 they introduced the second generation, the NB model of the MX5 Miata. It was more modernized and had more amenities and was starting to lose it's original Old School charm. Personally for that reason in my mind it is an 'Almost and Old School sports car.'
The car is now in its fourth generation, with the NC and ND generations. The NC and ND are not really Old School sports cars. In fact I herd the majority of them come with automatic transmissions and that is a deal breaker in itself. They are 'touring convertibles' and actually (and correctly) are marketed as such.
Personally I have no interest in owning an NC or an ND and might be able to stand having an NB if it had the Bilstein Package in it. An NB with the Bilstein package can be a real road holder.
I am not alone here with my attitude because NAs have a real cult following. A low mileage in excellent condition can draw upwards of $20,000 and you have to remember the newest of NA is now is 26 years old. My '91 is 33 years old.
I truly believe that an NA has the heart and soul of an Old School British sports car. They are just so damned much fun to drive.
But that's just me.
To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this:
http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY
