Journal: Kim De Bourbon's 66b

1966 MGB • GHN3L74255 • Tartan Red
Sept. 6, 1978 - July 24, 1980

I walked nonchalantly into the world of MGBs on Sept. 6, 1978, when I bought a 1966 MGB with 40,000 miles on it for $695 — including a hard top — from W and L Sports Cars, Inc., in Northumberland, Pa.

My boyfriend saw an ad in the paper, and thought it would make a nice car for me. I didn't have a clue. We went to look at it, and I don’t think I even drove it around the block. I handed over a check and drove it off the dealer's lot. It was the first car I ever owned.

I was just 22 years old. A lot of years have gone by since then, but I can still remember the thrill of sitting way down low and pulling out on the road after I bought that first B.

The thrill was short-lived, as I completely ignored the words "AS IS" written on the receipt. Fifteen miles down the road, the car quit. Some sort of electrical problem. We didn't even know that there were two batteries, and that they were located behind the seats. I think we rope-towed it home.

The ’66 B did need some work, and I let my boyfriend take it to a friend's garage. What did I know. The car disappeared there for almost a year, waiting for the clutch master and slave cylinders to be rebuilt. When I finally got the car back, I left the boyfriend, moved to a new town, and started looking for someone who understood my car. In August 1979 I found Chick Knorr at Knorr's Foreign Car Service in Bloomsburg, who would take care of my cars for the next 21 years.

The '66 B was my only car and I drove it year ’round, until one dark and rainy night I missed a turn and ran it off the road into a farmer's field, driving young and senselessly. Beers may have been involved. I and the guy with me spent the night in the cow pasture sleeping under the tonneau cover. I don’t even remember what the damage to the car was, but I still have a scar on the top of my left foot from a nasty cut I got during the crash. My first MGB came to an untimely end on July 24, 1980.

It says something about this time in my life that I have no photos of this car. MGBs were still being sold new at the time I bought this one used from a dealer. I had neither a camera nor a reason to take a picture of my 12-year-old car.



1969 MGB • GHD4U179352G • Tartan Red
Aug. 15, 1980-Nov. 11, 1983

I wasn’t without an MGB for long. Less than a month later, Chick sold me a 1969 B for $1,100. It was a good, solid car, and freshly painted red. Chick painted the rocker panels black, which I thought looked really sharp. A year later he admitted he over sprayed some undercoating there, so the black on the rocker panels was just a cover-up.

The ’69 B was a very reliable driver. I wasn’t crazy about the plastic “pillow” dash, but the car had been refurbished, if not completely restored, and I took more interest in the care and operation of this B. I still had the hard top from the ‘66B, which served me very well in the winter.

I drove the heck out of that car, taking it on two vacations, in 1981 to Washington, D.C., and the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia, and in 1982 to Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine. Just me, the B, and an ornery cat named Benjamin who loved to travel.

The 1969 B met its end on Nov. 11, 1983, when it was parked on Main Street in Bloomsburg late one night. A drunk plowed into it after failing to negotiate a turn, shortening the car by about three inches. This happened just two blocks east of Chick’s garage, so I had it towed to his doorstep. I left it there with a note on the windshield: “Time for another MGB!”

The insurance adjuster wrote off the B as a total loss, and valued it at $2,120. Chick wanted the wreck for parts, of course, so I claimed the salvage and got a check for $1,721 from the insurance company. The drunk driver was arrested with a Breathalyzer reading of 0.19, almost twice the legal limit of 0.10. He pleaded guilty and paid a $500 fine.



1972 MGB • GHN5UC274407 • Red
Nov. 16, 1983 – 1989

Five days after I lost the ’69 B, Chick put me in a 1972 MGB. I gave him $500 plus the 1969 B, now a really good parts car. The hardtop that I’d had since my first B survived the wreck, and we kidded that once again, it was just a matter of replacing the body.

The ’72 B ran well enough, but was a ratty little car, and I never got attached to it. It had Rostyle wheels, not wires, and I didn't like that recessed grill. The paint was red but faded, and the dumb previous owner had popped rivets into the bonnet. I fixed it up the best I could, but I yearned for an early B with the metal dash.

Less than a month later, Chick found a worthy candidate for full restoration. On Dec. 6, 1983, I gave him a $1,500 down payment for a new 1966 MGB, with the understanding that I would keep driving the ’72 and give him money when I could towards the restoration of the ’66. It would be Tartan red, of course, just like all my other Bs

Three months later I took a job three hours away in Danbury, Conn. A good friend of mine had senselessly killed himself driving drunk, and it was time for a change in my life.

Chick got to work stripping the ’66 down to the tub. But — as these things often go — months turned into years as Chick tried to keep up on the restoration project while struggling to keep his foreign car repair business going. It was easy for us both to lose impetus on the '66 project when I wasn’t around and he had his hands full with the shop.

In October 1986, I packed a tent, sleeping bag, camp stove and lantern in the boot of the ’72 and took myself on a camping trip to the Adirondacks in upstate New York. The B was a solid beater, and I had no qualms driving it into the woods to haul firewood.

In 1987, I bought a small house on top of a big hill in New Fairfield, Conn. And although I had a garage for the first time, I needed a more practical car for winter. With a house to spend money on and a new boyfriend, Charles, to spend time with, keeping an old sports car just wasn’t a priority. In 1989, a friend bought the ’72 B for the same $500 I’d paid for it. I gave that plus another $500 to Chick in exchange for my first “foreign” car, a 1981 Subaru DL wagon. Subarus have been my "other car" ever since.



1966 MGB • GHN3L74255 • Tartan Red
July 21, 2000 –

Over the next eight years, I got on with my life in Connecticut. Charles and I married in 1992, and started living happily ever after. Chick and I talked a couple of times a year, and no one could understand why I wasn’t more concerned about the MG not getting done. But the time just wasn’t quite right.

Fate stepped in again in 1997, when I got a new job and moved back to eastern Pennsylvania. Now that I was in a better financial situation and only an hour away from Bloomsburg, I started to dream again about the MGB. Chick had some health problems, and it looked like finishing my car was going to be the last thing he did before he closed the shop.

Finally, the day arrived. On July 21, 2000, Charles drove me to Bloomsburg to pick up the restored 1966 MGB. Over the course of 16 years, the car had been totally rebuilt from the ground up, with an engine rebuild and all-new interior. The final cost to me was $7,700, a good price for all that was done to it.

It had been 20 years since I’d wrecked that first 1966 MGB. Hard to believe. The memories came flooding back when I climbed in behind that oversized “banjo” steering wheel and took a whiff of that indescribably distinctive British car smell. I tried out all the dash toggles, trying to remember which one did what.

I was now 44 years old, and about to begin a real love affair with the MGB. The car was now a classic, and I had developed an appreciation for MGs that I just did not have in the ’70s and ’80s.

I intend to keep this 1966 MGB for as long as I am capable of driving it.