Topic

Last october i did the same thing i always do on a sunday me and girlfriend drive to a pub,have a pint and a meal and then drive back.........how i find the drive back boring.........and what happened next has changed my life...........LOOK at that lovely sportscar my girlfriend shouted has we walked past a dealership to the car park....THERE WAS A MGTF IN TROPHY BLUE...comeaway from it i shouted you wont be able to get out of one,your bum will be scraping the ground..............We went home the subject of the mg kept creeping up over the following days...............The trophy blue colour was magnetic,it drew glances from passers by........We already had 2 cars,so a third seemed crazy.......How can we afford i said,,,,she replied stop smoking..............The following weekend we went to the same pub but on the saturday........the dealership was open.....lets take the mg for a test drive i said and make today more of a day out............i was smitten and we bought the car with a promise i would not smoke again or the car goes.............That was the first thing the mg changed in my life......no more smoking ,,,and nearly 12 months on im still not smoking My garage was full of all the things me and my girlfriend never wanted to throw away.....junk..............my 2011 megane just squeezing past,,,sometimes i had to dig it out and put the stuff back when it was put back in at night.................On arrival of the mg the wheather was wet.............a shame to leave it out in the rain i said...In a flash.my megane cast out and mg in garage all snug and warm........i pondered on the idea of turning the garage into a workshop as the mg was a older car,it would need more tlc.........took a few days off work and cleaned out the junk of 10 years of collecting.........it grew from there white painted walls,strip lighting and a red floor ,combined with a bench,toolchest,i created a mancave..........what a pleasure it is to go in..... mg gleaming and that fresh paint smell.......another thing the mg has changed...................ive never been one for polishing cars.My renault when shouting clean me goes to a local wash.......give me the cheapest wash i always say........But the mg has got its own shelf with cleaning products,dash gloss,tyre shine,wheel cleen,window polish,body polish,and some of that duraglit for polishing the tailpipes......microfibre cloths are now added to my shopping list................yet another thing changed by the mg............last but not least the driving..........no longer boring going out and about..........spend most of the time looking for longer routes home to saver mine and girlfriends time in the mg,Getting home from work i now find i want to get out and drive somewhere,anywhere ,,,,,,,,which goes to show my life is healthier,tidier,and more interesting with those drives out in the country,,,,,not to mention more knoledgeble after joining the t bar.........ive been mged and its changed my life.....please share your experiences how your mg has changed your life for the better?

A couple of changes then.

or could it be the midlife crisis

mgtfbluestreak wrote: wrote:

please share your experiences how your mg has changed your life for the better?

I had to learn to fix cars quick.

It started a good few years ago now, a phone call really is what made everything come about.

My dad, to be frank has has too much spare cash and just loves to buy things, fair enough he has worked all his life and has decided in his old age to enjoy some of his gains, started with a boat, then buying little cars to clean up and sell on for a profit, he would find them for sale on the side of the road and buy them for cash, pass them onto me for bodywork and cleanup and then we ould sell and split the profit, average of £150 profit each on every car we sold so it was a nice little venture we could share, 43 cars later we decided to call it a day as the price of little cars went up due to fuel costs and tax and such. So, he found himself bored again. Thats when the phone rang! "how do you fancy coming to nottingham with me?" he said "piss off!" i said, " thats hours and hours away, why do you want to go to nottingham?" This is the bot where i laughed at him "ive found another car i want to go and look at" "what is it this time?" "An MGB roadster" "what the hell is an MGB?" "an old car, needs a little bit of work but its a classic" "hold on" i said as i had a flick though ebay quickly to see what an mgb was.

5am the next morning, on our way to nottingham to view the mgb, very long drive for us living down south, previous calls had been made to the seller asking every question under the sun about it, condition, mileage, any marks or scratches, the usual stuff really. Needless to say when we finally arrived we could have knocked the bloke out! Rolls of duck tape and tubes of used superglue were found in the boot, he neglected to tell us that most of the car was held together using said items. Not happy and an argument later we found a local asda, sat inthe coffee shop with all of the autotraders and ad magazines we could "borrow" from the kiosk and sat in down to find another. After many calls we found another!! In bournemouth! So, back on the road we went and viewed the car, a quick test drive sold it and we got it back to bath with no problems. My dad started working on it, fixing little bits and bobs but i wasnt very involved as he lives an hour and a half away but everytime i visited i would always have a look at her sat in the garage and took it for a spin around the village. Only a couple of months had passed when the next call came, i knew what he was going to say before i answered the phone. " im selling my mg" "why?" want another one" "why?" I want one with the chrome bumpers and wire wheels rather then the rubber bumpers" "why?" "looks better" "fair enough" Anyway, due to working commitments he was on his own this time, found a new older one with all the chrome and he went and bought it. He sold his to a guy in ireland who flew across and drove it back.

A few weeks later i went to visit him and see his new MGB roadster, Dark royal blue colour, shiny chrome parts, wood inside, leather, very nice, drove very nicely too...l i suppose. Let us not forget im younger and therefore used to driving more modern cars without chokes and overdrives. This got me thinking on the long drive home, "i want something like that, would be nice to have a toy to play with, something to do on my days off, something to restore". And that was that, never thought of it again and a few years passed. Got on with life, moved a few times, found my now wife and got married. Settled down to a life of work and watching crappy films on tv. Summers came and summers went, until this summer!

I found myself bored, doing the same old routine on days off of going shopping and plodding through life killing my days off doing... well, not much really. Never really spoke to the old man about his MG in the garage, never really had much interest in it, sure, it was a nice thing to look at but i struggled like hell to drive it due to the clutch and bugger me it was slow! Thats when i got thinking and curious. Im now in a better position, lifes going smoothly for once, have a few quid to spare which i never had before and i need to get out of this rut i find myself in. Basically im bored!

Thats when he received the phone call! "i want an mg" "my mg?" "hell no, one that actually goes when you put your foot down" "what are you talking about?" "an MGF" "what the hell is an MGF?" he had a quck look through ebay to see what it was and 8am the next morning were on our way to plymouth. Cash in back pocket and ready to start a new venture together. Test drive her, liked her, liked the seller and the paperwork, loved the price but then we put the roof down and BANG! she was sold. Got her home, got the polish out and started work. He's got his mg of his generation, i have mine of my generation. We never really used to speak apart from when necessary, never really had anything to say to each other but this simple little car company has built a bridge between father and son, a reason to call each other, a reason to visit each other and has given us the gift of a relationship and a mutual interest back, something that we lost a long, long time ago.

For me the MG filled the gap left by realising that plunging into cold sea water was no longer fun!
Sheila and I scuba dived and with a local club we travelled all over, mainly Scotland, diving. Nowadays it's strictly warm water diving for me!
It left a lot of free time and I bought the MG for Sheila (cough ) as a 50th Birthday present. we both loved driving around in it and we also met a lot of nice people who were also into MGs.

Fantastic story sithmaull thats just what i wanted to hear

About 20 years ago I was a test driver at Rover, Gaydon.
The cars were run 24/7 over 3 shifts & you didn't know what car you would have the next day or what the job involved.
The cars at the time were minis, 200/400, 600, 800's & then Freelanders & MGF's.
I drove the MGF on rural & motorway routes & was suitably impressed, but no way I could afford one at the time .
20 odd years later I now have a '99 F, which is my pride & joy, despite the £££'s I have lavished on it.
The best feel good factor I know
By the way I'm 76 & I'm happy that I can still enjoy it, though my track day at Silverstone was a bit daunting

Some of the members here already know my story but i don't mind sharing it with others. I'll start with a pic:





This pic was taken in 1996 and shows me driving my brand new Mgf, my face is a little rounder now, my hair just like the glasses and the car, are long gone now as well. On the 13th of December 1993 i joined the Army, in 1994 after completing my training I was a very young 18 year old lance corporal in the Royal Military Police. By the time this picture was taken I had already completed 3 tours of duty in Bosnia (1 with the United Nations and 2 with NATO). My first tour had seen me investigating war crimes, body finds and mass graves for the Hague tribunal. However despite all this life was good, and these were good times, i had a fiancee and remember with great excitement looking through the MG brochures debating what colour to pick, what interior i wanted, finally placing the order and receiving the updates on where my car was in the build queue. I can't remember where or when i took delivery of the car. I should be able to, but it is one of just many "black holes" in my memory now. In 1997 i was posted to Northern Ireland a very different conflict to the one i had experienced in Bosnia but a very real one all the same. What should have been a 2 year posting became 3 years. I got married and had to sell the MG to help pay for the wedding. It was also during this time that the first tiniest "cracks" began to appear in my life. I can see them now looking back although i didn't at the time. After Northern Ireland i was posted back to the mainland. I was hoping for some respite from operational duties, but it wasn't to be and within 3 months i found myself preparing to go back out to Bosnia for a 4th tour. Alot had changed in Bosnia since my last tour and i found myself thinking more and more about previous tours and those "cracks" became canyons, so much so that 5 months into the tour i had a complete mental and physical breakdown, I was Diagnosed with what in the past was called shell shock and is now called Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. I was flown home and spent 6 weeks in a psychiatric hospital trying to piece myself back together. My wife left me at this time, the stress of me always being away and my breakdown proving to be 1 straw to many. Life goes on though, i came through it and managed to get myself a 3 year posting to NATO HQ in Holland (the only place where i couldn't get deployed on operational duty) and slowly rebuilt my life. Time passed and before i knew it i had served 11 years. My final posting back to the UK and Aldershot proved to be my last, before i had even got there i was told not to bother unpacking because i was going straight out to Iraq. I was apprehensive to say the least, but I had to prove to myself if i could do it. 7 days later i got the news i wouldn't be going to Iraq My jubilation was short lived however as the very next day i was told i was going out to Afghanistan . What should have been a 6 month tour turned into 8 months due to a lack of replacements, so much so that we were told we would get 3 weeks off and then be coming straight back out to Afghanistan for another 6 months. That tour and the thought of doing another one proved to be to much. I left the army in December 2006, after 13 years with 7 medals and a life times worth of experience. 12 months later the canyon sized cracks appeared again. My life came off the train tracks I had another breakdown was involved in car accident, stripped of my licence and narrowly avoided a 2 year prison sentence. It was at this point when i first got in touch with a charity for ex serviceman with mental health problems called "Combat Stress". Over the following years I have had 5 residential stays at their treatment centre in Newport receiving counseling and therapy. My life now is very different to that of the one i had in that pic. I have to be careful of where i go and what i do, to avoid stress and panic attacks. I prefer to be awake at night because it's peaceful and quiet. There are now those black holes in my memory and i haven't worked since January 2012. I am not bitter and twisted about how things have worked out, or my time in the army, I wouldn't change anything even if i could. So despite not having a driving licence when the opportunity came around to buy MGTF i couldn't turn it down. While it may not be the MGF in the picture, it serves as a reminder for how things used to be, of better times in the past and hopefully better times in the future. My TF helps to keep me "sane" gives me something else to focus on, to think about, and to work on. I measure success totally different now to how i used to. I set myself small goals, things i know i can achieve. I haven't set myself a time limit for finishing my MG such things are meaningless now to me. So long as i can keep progress no matter how small or big that may be, i am happy. When the car is complete my next goal will be to get my driving licence back, and after that who knows what i could achieve.

http://www.combatstress.org.uk/

you are a great man denial.....we all owe a lot to you and people like yourself.... ..