• Hi Guest!
    You can help ensure that British Car Forum (BCF) continues to provide a great place to engage in the British car hobby! If you find BCF a beneficial community, please consider supporting our efforts with a subscription.
    There are some perks with a member upgrade!
    **Upgrade Now**
    (PS: Subscribers don't see this gawd-aweful banner
Tips
Tips

Dealing with car show envy...

Share this page

Sherlock

Sherlock

Yoda
Country flag
Offline
OK... I'm so bad for this.

I chose to move back to Alberta three years ago, leaving the classic-car fertile ground of Ontario behind. Now I just get ultra-envious looking at photos of great car shows in places of higher population (ie. almost anywhere in the States, even Ontario, Toronto).

Just finished perusing some photos of this year's Carlisle Import Nationals, wow! A Volvo P1900 roadster (that 1950's sports car they made), a Facel-Vega, Sunbeam Harrington coupe, etc...

Calgary, as much as I love it, is pathetic automotively for the most part. I'll rarely ever see interesting old European and British cars, they're just simply scarce here. Yeah... I need help! /bcforum/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/cool.gif

How do you guys cope? You'll probably just throw it back in my face of course /bcforum/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/grin.gif like Mickey going to The Great Race this weekend...
 
Open the garage door and take a sniff, keep eyes closed and dream... I could send you a bottle of some real good british car smell.

No, just kidding, sorry my friend.

Patrick
 
Ya got a camera..get a LBC..easy enough...Just go for it.
 
The only problem with me... An MGB is just simply too common of a car for me, although I know it might be classified as un-common for my American-car friends /bcforum/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/grin.gif Perhaps I have too high of a standard? /bcforum/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/hammer.gif
 
Lots of interesting LBCs out there other than MGBs (though I like those quite a bit).

The only real cure is to own your own car, even if it doesn't run. As long as you can sit in it and make vroom-vroom sounds... /bcforum/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/grin.gif
 
I probably made 30 trips from Indiana to California in my TR4 before I restored it. ....and the car never left my driveway. ...Spent hours sitting in the car dreaming about it...
 
I hear ya Sherlock. There's that strange little voice in the back of my head that tells me that MGBs and TR6s are somehow "common". Not that I don't like them. They're both excellent cars. But they seem to dominate the LBC scene.
I've always been that one who went for the strange stuff. The more people that go " you have a what? what the heck is that?" the happier I am.
Editorial note: I love MGBs and TR6s. I've owned a B and worked on plenty of both. I diden't mean to upset anyone. Consider it an observation from the outer fringes of my warped reality.
 
I understand completely, Banjo. I'm a real fan of MGBs, but I opted for a Bugeye instead -- a little more rare and just spoke to me somehow.

Now if I could afford another LBC I'd have a B in a heartbeat (or a TD, or TC, or TF, or...) /bcforum/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/grin.gif
 
Heck... I've been known in the past to hang out a little in microcar circles, especially back east in Ontario. And with those guys a "common" car is either an Isetta or a Messerschmitt in comparison to some of the oddball stuff floating around those circles.
 
See how it is. I was gonna name a Messerschmitt as one of those rare oddballs. But now that I know that they're "commom" welllll.. We can't have that now can we.
hehehehe.
There is no "micro car ring" around here. we have one guy that collects Crosleys, but that's about it.
If there was, that'd be my crowd!
Hmmmmm. mebbe I need to start one.
 
Hey Banjo...

Every June in southern Ontario, a bunch of guys get together for what they call Micro North, just a fun weekend with unusual cars. You aren't that far away from there, it would be well worth the weekend trip if you could pull it off.

Or at least I assume they are still doing their get together, I don't live there anymore...
 
Opening clarification - this is not meant to offend anyone and I apologize now if I do.

I have to admit, as a previous owner of daily driver "Dagenham Dustbins", as the Cortina's were known in the olde country, that I still have a hard time thinking of them as classics. I had a MK1 1500GT (did my first engine rebuild on that one) and a "grocery getter" MK2 1600.

I also have to admit that I was initially surprised at the affection shown for the Triumph Herald.

My first exposure to an LBC in North America was when I lived in Canada and my neighbour's 23 year old son knocked on my door and asked me to help him tune his "new" car - an Anglia. It brought back memories of many hours under the hood trying to make sure that my car would get me to work the next day.

Now if an Austin 1100 shows up, I will have to go into therapy as the one that I had was absolutely the worst vehicle I have ever owned. When it rained heavily we had to lift our feet out of the rising water in the footwells, which was coming in from BELOW - this made driving control a little difficult.

All that said, it is truly great that any old car models are being kept alive and on the road. Now that I have alienated a number of people, I will shut up. Have a good holiday weekend.
 
I saw a guy two years ago in Scarsdale, NY driving hammered Austin Healey. Scarsdale is pretty posh, lots of exotic stuff. This guy had a license plate holder that said: "Lost in the '50's"

The point is, the guy didn't have fortune into this LBC, while all around him were cruising all these exotics, but he was happy.

You don't need a show car. Get something unusual on the cheap and work on the car to make it run and drive.
 
TRDejaVu said:
Opening clarification - this is not meant to offend anyone and I apologize now if I do.
Click to expand...

No offense here, it's your opinion and well said.
 
dar100 said:
The point is, the guy didn't have fortune into this LBC, while all around him were cruising all these exotics, but he was happy.
Click to expand...

For years I've taken my MGB to shows like the Turkey Rod Run in Daytona Beach, and cruise-ins. The Turkey Run gets around 5000 cars in the speedway, and tons of them are high value custom rods, some of them are rare cars, most of them are American Muscle. Still, I usually get a lot of people who are genuinely very interested in the MGB and cars like it. Last year we had an organized effort to get LBCs parked together from our club. Again, we had a lot of interest.

The first year I went I was parked out in the back-40 and this burly muscle bound biker dude started looking the MG over. First impressions and all that took over and I figured, here we go - just wait for the comments. Well, this guy was so excited about seeing an MGB at the show. He asked a ton of questions and couldn't stop talking about MGs. He never gave the show-stopping 50s-era Chevys that were parked around me a second glance.

Point is, I guess, it doesn't take a ton of money to have a decent car and to have fun with it. You don't need to pour $50k into restoring a muscle car, or buy a new exotic to be (pardon the expression) "noticed".
 
/bcforum/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/iagree.gif TRDejavu, I know what you mean, but if you think about it, ANY old cars that survive the rigors of time and are lovingly cared for by someone, DO eventually gain the "status" of being classics, even if they were fairly mundane in their day!! Look at the Austin Metropolitan (Nash in this country) and you will see a car that was mediocre at best in its day, which is now a "cult classic".
Even Edsels have car clubs devoted to them!! /bcforum/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/cheers.gif
 
Sherlock said:
OK... I'm so bad for this.

I chose to move back to Alberta three years ago, leaving the classic-car fertile ground of Ontario behind.
Click to expand...

The problem is you stopped in Alberta, you should have continued on to BC...

SteveL
 
SteveL said:
The problem is you stopped in Alberta, you should have continued on to BC...

SteveL
Click to expand...

Saw that one coming a mile away... Maybe some day...
 
I definitely relate to the want something different mentality. I always loved LBCs and had wanted an Elan for years - then I found my true love. If you want something really different and quite fast by LBC standards take a look at the Evante for sale here:

https://lotusowners.com/forsale.htm

I'd bet the buyer won't ever loose any money on it if they ever sell it. Though it may take a while to find a buyer.

I'd buy it if I had the money then I could lay claim to owning the only two in the US at the present time. I'm hoping someone on the East coast will buy it so it will remain close by.
 
Back
Top