oh no ! another one of Jacks laments - yet another encounter or two with cars that must be left to die slowly

This happens all the time with me.

Last week I responded to a local ad offering two Midgets for sale. I took most of a morning, actually nearly all day after it was all done with, to go hunt this guy up as he is WAY out in the country, even by local mountain standards.

What I found was one midget sitting beside the road with its rear end up and the rear wheels off. Someone had started to make a drag car out of it by installing a narrowed Ford axle with disc brakes, some sort of single cam Toyota motor and an unknown gear box that didn't have a provision for a shifter. ?? There were no hatchets lying around but I am sure that they were used.

The thing was just sitting there with no top and had been home for critters for a long time. It obviously was never going to get to the point that the owner had dreams of.

It's sister was sitting up on a dirt ledge high above the pavement, and although it was stock it was in even worse shape.

In between them was a TR6 that had its best days WAY behind it. Left alone it too will eventually melt into the soil.

The guy wanted a minimum of a grand for the two midgets and didn't really want to sell the TR. Although he said that he was nearly broke from his earth moving business being so slow these days he still had visions of doing a full resto on the TR and he just had to have this silly amount for the two Midgets. I was as nice as I could be when I told him that people don't give a flying feather about how much you have in a car when you go to sell it. They just care about what the car is "to them" and what price they can buy it for at that moment. He laughed and said that he understood, but that was pretty much the end of the conversation.

I guess my rant here is about the number of cars that we all come across from time to time that COULD be rehabbed or COULD be used for parts, that are never going to budge again until they day that the crusher man shows up. Sad, really, to see these things neglected, abused, mistreated and generally allowed to pass on without even so much as a donated fuse block or carb core.

Then, this week end, to top it off I ran across four more sitting beside the road in a very rural down on its heals car lot. There was a 74 CB roadster, an RB roadster, a CB 73 or 74 GT and a 1275 Spridget. All were in various states of repair or disrepair and all looked more than a little neglected. I am pretty sure that the proprietor has some outlandish ideas about their worth so I am not going to break my neck trying to call him or go by again.

No real point in this post. Just a small lament that people don't see things clearly all the time and that often leads to a lose of some sort to our LBC community.

Jack

Yeah - the minute you show any interest in a derelict car it suddenly becomes the most valuable piece of junk ever made.

My best method of acquiring something like that (this is back in my buying days) was to look up the guy's wife and hand her my card and tell her that if her husband ever decided he wanted to sell it for $X, they should call me. The wife often went to work on him, not being able to get the thought of being handed the $X for that piece of crap her husband insisted on keeping around, and I'm sure I bought several cars this way that I would never have got if I'd just made the owner a lowball offer.

A nice refinement was to write my offer in large numerals on the back of the card and to tell her that the offer was off if I found another one before they called me. That seemed to hasten the call!

Sounds like the cars you saw were ready for last rights (anyone got a backhoe?)

i hate those kind of guys. i'm one of those guys. i've got a 66 mustang sitting in my back yard just rusting away. and it's still not for sale. gonna fix it one of these days.

Same way with that 79B still sitting in the yard about two miles up the road from me. Has been there for at least six or seven years now and the guy won't sell :(

This was a topic of conversation between myself and an old gearhead friend just last night. Some times the human instincts simply run contrary to logic. Some folks get their feelings hurt because we remind them that they haven't done what they wanted to with the project, some fail to grasp the concept of time = $ (and parking space, no matter how rurual also =$) and some are simply selfish and mean spirited (If I cant' have it, no one will).
For me, I have tried to get past the collectibility/preservation concept and remember that, just like lost puppies, we can't save them all.
Sad but true.

I need a life! One of my weekly routines is to make the rounds of the area checking the LBCs laying about!

OOOHHH,Just to be able to see another MG on the road in these parts would be nice. ; ) LOL

Always enjoy your rants (oh, sorry - this was a lament), Jack.

Hey, the guy has a dream! Can you blame him? OK, I guess you can.

I think most of us have been guilty of this crime - at some time in our life.

I think you should call,
Marsh

You never know what you're going to get when you go looking at a car do you. A couple of weeks ago I went to look at a 64 B for Chris Roop and had a similar experience. The car was real rough and he was told he could get 5K for it. It ran, had an 18GF engine and 4 sychro transmission. Sun Pro oil pressure and water temp guages mounted where the speaker goes, paper thin floors, butchered electrics, the wrong distributor etc, etc. He said he bought it from an MG" Expert "for $3500. Expert swindler is more like it. I felt sorry for the guy.

About two years ago I saw an Austin Healey Sprite/Midget that was just sitting next to a house. It had rust, flats, shabby interior and the usual look of a car "waiting" to be restored.
I left a sign on the car letting the owner know I'd be interested if he/she was selling.
A year later I got a call. I met with the owner and almost laughed in his face when he said he wanted 4500.00 for the car.
It's probably still sitting in the same place.

When i lived in Missouri ,i spotted a 50s morgan sitting disassembled in a carport
for a couple of yrs,,so one day i dropped by and talked to the wife.
Her answer was: He would sell me before he would sell that morgan.
Took that as a final.

Already had one i couldnt afford (G)

Jack,
You make me feel better about being a "tire kicker" ......

There is a guy a couple of miles from me that has two B's sitting in the back yard. Both are just parts cars at this point, all 4 seats are sitting in the dirt under the car, floorpans completely gone..... wont sell or even think about it. He's got big plans to make "drag race cars" out of them.

You ought to send him to the guy that Jack met with the Midget! He'd be part way there.

Okay, here is the kicker.

A tad over forty years ago I was chasing some woman and found myself in a small south Pennsylvania town where her grand parents lived.

I can't even recall the lady's name but I do have a clear vision of a white 53 Buick Skylark convertible with Kelsy Hayes wire wheels sitting on a street curb under an overhanging tree in the rain. It had a For Sale sign on it, but I had other things on my mind.

Call me stupid!

Jack

Edit: Ooops ! just remembered her name. ;-) Shame on me !

I'm always saddened by cool cars rotting away or butchered too.

My wife and I went up to a bay just south of Whangarei last weekend and I saw at the side of the road in a yard a Midget rotting away. Even though we were doing 90kph I could still see the rust at the front of the bonnet!!
Cars like that are not common here so it would've been worth $ 5-6k in good condition.

Paul ;-)

It happens over here too. Good cars going to waste.

I know of a 1970 MG, (don't know if it's a Midget or a B) sat in a garage near my outlaws place. Been sat there for a few years. Belonged to the woman's late husband and she can't bear to part with it.

My father in law has been talking to her about it and she knows I'm interested, She said that if neither of her sons want it, she'll be in touch so it's just a waiting game.

Yep there is a GT up here that I would lover to take home, a midget as well. No go.

The worst I saw was the one in my sig. Owner of the garage it was at said is was abandoned 15 years earlier (this was about 1996) and even though he could get an abandoned property title to it, he would rather watch it rot. Pretty far gon, but all there:

It ran when it was parked (12 years ago)