A little Midget & Sprite Party!
Sprites and Midgets are rather taking over the showroom at the moment. The red one is an original Austin-Healey 'Frogeye' Sprite that is with us for a general check over and a service. It is facing our own Tifosi Rana, the pretty yellow car built using our fibreglass panels on a 1500 Midget base, while next to that is a very early Mk1 MG Midget from 1961. It makes for a very interesting trio, but I'm not sure which one I would choose if I could only have one because they all offer something different.
Just in on the forecourt is a lovely X-plate MGF in Alumina Green that a long standing customer has asked us to sell for him. It hadn't been here 24 hours before I got the first enquiry from somebody who had seen it while driving past the garage. And I am not surprised, because it is a lovely colour and a very nice car. We've looked after this one for a number of years, and it comes with a matching hardtop and leather interior. Prices are at long last starting to creep up for the MGFs and TFs, but they still represent a whole lot of car for comparatively little money and they are a great way of getting into sports car ownership, especially if you don't want an older car with its higher maintenance demands.
Regular visitors to the garage will have seen a Harvest Gold BGT on the forecourt, very rarely moving and looking a little bit sorry for itself. This is Steve's own car, one that he has had since 1974 and it is really the car that got Hall's Garage specialising in MGBs. A proper restoration was always on the cards, but there never seems to be the right time to begin as customer cars naturally take precedent. Hopefully though, we will get it into the back of the workshop shortly and the work can begin on an as-and-when basis. It would be wonderful to have it done by the end of this year, but we will see how that goes.
Of course, we always have a steady flow of modern cars through the workshop as well as the classics, coming in for servicing, repairs and MoTs. Right now, we are having real problems getting the parts we need for some of these, often simple parts too. This Fiat 500 has been waiting for a clutch slave cylinder for a couple of weeks for example – the owner is obviously rather keen to get it back and we are something of the piggy in the middle between them and the parts suppliers. And that is by no means the worst offender – we have a 57-plate Renault Scenic that has been waiting for parts even longer. The Reliant Regal you can see in the picture behind the Fiat 500 is a project car from Classics Monthly magazine which is nearing the end of a total restoration, but on which we are helping to sort out a niggling problem with the engine. Parts for that are not always any easier to get, but at least the owner doesn't need it back quite so urgently!
