The Longest Roadtrip

This 42 year old barn-find was never lost. And now it's a treasure.

Only one heater vent worked in that 1977 MGB and by worked, I mean very begrudgingly. I’d spent the previous night driving with one hand on the wheel slowly freezing into a hardened clamp while the other warmed over the halfheartedly blowing defroster vent. When that hand was warm enough, I’d peel the driving hand off of the wheel and warm it over the vent. It was a process I’d repeated over and over again all night long. I was barely 16 years old but I was so determined to make the journey under my own power. Even when my father offered to drive the MGB for a leg of the journey, so that I could pilot the comfortable rental car he was trailing me in, I told him no thanks and that I’d be ok. I drove with gigantic semi trucks barreling down the road beside and in front of me. I felt like those people in Jurassic Park must have felt running along side a brontosaurus. Even the sedans that passed me seemed huge. I pressed that tiny 1.8 liter engine to squeeze out as many of it’s original 63 horsepower as it could find the entire way. That was not a typo. I didn’t mean to type 163 horsepower. I meant 63 horsepower. And we’d started our journey in Omaha Nebraska and were headed home to Denver.

Slowly, the miserable frozen night melted away into day. The sun was rising in my rear view mirror and it lit the highway infront of me as if to encourage me to keep driving. Despite being as sick as a dog with the flu going through a year’s supply of Kleenex overnight, I was in a state of euphoria. My little car. My first car… was finally entering the state of Colorado. The euphoria, however, was short lived. About 30 minutes into the sunrise, the exhaust pipe lost its battle with rust and time and parted ways from the header. It dragged on the ground. Not only that but the engine made the obnoxious droning growl that only a straight piped four cylinder can make. I pulled over and my father ran up to my side and we crawled under the car to anchor the exhaust pipe to some bits of the undercarriage so the little car (with even less horsepower), could finish the journey home.

You may wonder how I acquired such a car as a 16 year old boy. Well, my father and I drove back and forth to Omaha from Denver 7 or 8 times so I could help him rebuild a family home he still owned and get it ready for the next round of renters. The home was in terrible shape after the last renters had treated it like a giant toilet and I can still remember ripping out urine soaked carpets, cracked toilets and failing tiles before the long tedious job of cleaning and refreshing the entire home. I’d assumed the entire time that I’d been working for free. I was a fifteen year old boy and back then, when your father said work, you worked. But not out of fear. Out of love, respect and necessity. We slept on the floors at night and woke up and toiled. We repeated that process for weeks, driving back and forth until there was before us a lively livable home.

Toward the end of that summer, my father gave me the biggest surprise of my life. He sat me down and said he’d been tracking my work and that by his calculations, I’d earned about $1,500. He said he’d pay me cash or that he’d match that cash if wanted to put it toward a car. Obviously, my father knew me well and he knew I’d opt for a car without hesitation. So he took me just out of town to Bellevue Nebraska where he knew a guy with a garage with a couple of cars he was looking to sell. He was calling in one of many favors he’d earned over his life. My father never met a stranger. Only friends. This garage was unlike any other garage I’d ever seen in my entire life. The sun filtered through the crevasses in the wall and made beams of golden light filled with swirling dust. And these beams of light seemed to massage the objects in the room the same way a parent might tuck in a napping child. There were all of these exotic and strange looking cars with names and shapes I’d never seen before. My mind was blown. I saw one car parked over in the corner and it was the most gorgeous car I’d ever seen. I spent a few minutes looking at it and then I looked over at my father and his friend and they both kinda nudged me along as if to say not that one. Before I moved on, though I took a mental snapshot of the car’s badge because I wanted to remember what it was. “ E-Type … Jaguar”. ( I now own a E-Types spiritual successor, the Jaguar F-Type. Suddenly I can’t help but think there’s a mental connection there) I moved on and saw another car. This one was almost as good looking but just a bit too small for me. “Spitfire … Triumph”. I kept moving. I walk past a few more cars of various sizes and shapes and makes until I saw this little red two seat convertible. To me, it looked a little like the E Type I’d just seen, maybe mixed with a little bit of the Porsche 911s that were popular when I was a kid. This one is perfect I thought. I looked up and my father and his friend nodded in agreement.

There was one issue. I wasn’t 16 yet. How was I going to drive that that car from Omaha to Denver without a license? The answer was, I wasn’t. I had to wait until my birthday at the end of November. I’d loved cars and driving for as long as I could remember and was already bursting at the seems to be able to pilot a car of my own volition. But now, it was even worse. I had a beautiful car waiting for me and I wanted to bring it home. But it essentially had to wait until winter. Not the best time to drive a vintage British car from Nebraska to Denver.

I remember getting that car home after the 10 hour trip, busted muffler and all and the first thing I did was ask my father if he needed anything from the grocery store. He said no but gave me permission to go. I went to the store and picked up the first can of wax I could find and a Gatorade to help with my sick and aching throat. When I returned home, I polished that oxidized little car until it shined in that brilliant orange red. Then from what I’m told I slept for about 24 hours straight. I had many adventures with that car and many heartbreaks when it intermittently decided to stop working. I had it for the rest of high school and even brought it with me for a year or two at college.

Though I had always loved that car, by the time I had enough technical skills and money to fix it, I’d moved onto other more modern vehicles that were faster and more attuned to the pace of modern life and traffic. But I never forgot the feeling that the little roadster gave me. I got older and further along in my career and I even obtained a BMW Z4 roadster and then a BMW Z4M. I sold those cars and moved onto other vehicles and recently bought a Mazda Miata as a fun project and to fill my desire for a roadster. My father kept that MGB in the garage for his entire life. He always said it would get restored one day. And every time I went home to visit family I always felt comforted that it was there. Even decades later, I’d always sneak out to the garage and just stare at it and remember the adventure my father and I had that summer.

Sadly, my father died. It’s still difficult for me to write that sentence, but what hasn’t died is his memory and his spirit. That said, as it was time to sort through things as families do after the passing of a loved one especially a parent, it was critical to decide what to do with the little red roadster. My first decision was to be rational and simply take the shift knob as a keepsake and give the rest of the vehicle away to be restored or parted out by a collector or a shop. After all, I thought to myself, I already have three cars and one is a roadster. What would I do with a fourth? But as the day came near to see the little roadster off, I just couldn’t do it. I needed to know that it would be restored and enjoyed as a whole car by someone who loved it. But here’s the thing. You can’t decide what someone else does with your things once you’ve sold them. So I decided to keep it. And this year, it will be restored. And I’ll have it transported to me in Texas where it will live in a public garage where I can drive it and it can be seen by other enthusiasts. My father never let that car go. He knew some day I’d want to come back for it. And he was right. Written for my father. With love and admiration.

I’ll be embarking on my first ground up vintage restoration soon. Some day I’ll tell you how it went. My roadtrip hasn’t ended. Apparently it’s just begun