Words: John Gunnell
I grew up in Staten Island, N.Y. and loved classic cars and hot rods. The only trouble was, there were not many classics or hot rods around. Although Staten Island was New York City’s most rural borough, the people who lived there didn’t really have room for storing cars. One of the biggest collectors was a guy named Joe who actually kept his cars on a median strip in the middle of the road in front of his house. Try doing that today!
There was a singing group in the old neighborhood called The Elegants. They had a song called “Little Star” which zoomed to the top of the charts. The rumor was that their manager made most of the money, but the crooners did have enough to buy a couple of newer (at the time) cars, like a 1957 Oldsmobile hardtop called “Blue Indigo,” a 1958 Pontiac Bonneville hardtop called “Misty” and a 1959 Pontiac Bonneville Tri-Power hardtop called “Moby Dick.”
These cars were Kustoms rather than hot rods. A couple of older Kustoms were also owned by members of their car club, the Drifters. There was a scalloped shoebox Ford called “Wild One” and a black ’46-’48 Ford coupe. The only cars that came close to being hot rods were a white 1930s Willys coupe with a louvered deck lid and a Model T Touring Car. The Model T was kind of a jalopy, and I seem to remember the doors falling off one time when the owner “got on it.”
Although there weren’t any real West Coast hot rods in the Drifters, there was a car close by that looked sort of like a miniature hot rod. It was a very tiny car, but it had an upright radiator shell, clamshell front fenders, torpedo headlights, a folding hood, a gas tank and spare tire mounted at the rear, a curvy cowl and an upright windshield that could be folded flat if you liked wind-in-the-face driving.
The car was an MG TD - a model made from about 1949 to 1953 - by British automaker MG. I fell in love with that car and all through my life I wanted one, although I never was able to afford one. I came close to buying a disassembled car in Kansas City one time. The asking price was $5,000, but it needed lots of work. I’m glad I did not buy it. Another time I took a trip to California and could have bought one at a dealership called The Chequered Flag for $12,000. If I knew what I knew now, that car would have been in my garage.
After 9/11 happened, I decided that it was time to buy an MG TD, even if I could only afford a car in the $8,000 to $9,000 range. I had a bead on two cars: a green one in Chicago and a red one in Buffalo, N.Y. When the seller from New York offered to deliver his car for free, it clinched the deal. When it arrived, I saw a time-worn car that had one mismatched fender, a big hole in the muffler and a pretty good oil leak from the front of the engine. I fixed the oil leak for $50 and left the rest.
That summer I drove my little red MG hot rod over 5,000 miles, noisy muffler and all. Eventually I spotted the hole in the muffler (until then I thought sports cars were just supposed to be noisy) and replaced it with a new stainless steel muffler I bought on eBay. I joined a British car club and other members used to marvel that my smoky little roadster made it to every event, while their shiny cars broke down.
Eventually, though, I got sick of hearing people say “when are you going to restore that car?” So I decided to rip it apart and restore it. I’m still not sure if that was a good idea or not. For the past four or five years (maybe more) it’s been in a body shop getting painted and getting the wood framing under the body tub rebuilt. I now have about $17,000 into body and paint and another $8,000 or so into mechanical rebuilds. My MG hot rod is still far from finished, but the other morning I picked it up at the body shop and brought it to my shop to start assembling it.
Now that I’m semi-retired from the auto restoration business (but still have the shop), I might be able to build my childhood dream. From time to time, as the project moves along, I’ll tell you about it in this blog.
