Hi Guest!
Hey - did you know if you click on the title of a thread it will take you to the first unread post since you last visited that thread?
but were afraid to ask: 
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Pretty Please - add it to our Events forum(s) and add to the calendar! >> 
Hello BCF!
I have a car I doubt you've seen before. It's a 1951 Simca 8 Sport. Simca in this period made Fiat's in France under license. The 8 Sport has a hand made aluminum body designed by Stabilmenti Farina (older brother of Pinin Farina). It originally had a 40hp 1220cc engine. My car has a plaque on the dash saying it was in the Palm Springs races in 1954. At some point, it was crashed. There was some minor frame damage and the front sheet metal was replaced with parts from the later Simca Sport 9, a different design. I bought it in 2018. It had been sitting in a field for about 20 years and had no engine or transmission, the floor was rusted out and most of the interior was gone. The father of the guy I bought it from was a collector of small special Italian cars, and he bought in 1978 because it had a Siata engine at that time.
So why am I on this British forum? These cars are rare and very pretty, but not valuable. My plan is to make it fun to drive and easy to maintain. '51 Simca (or Fait) parts are not easy to get and so I have MGB front and rear suspension and brakes. My original plan was a Miata engine and I bought and installed one about 3 years ago. Since then I've been struggling with the wiring. I am missing a few suspension bits and a few months ago I looked at a flood damaged MGB for sale. When I looked at that engine, I suddenly thought "What the heck am I doing? I should just make it all simple, MG or maybe Triumph". The MG only had a few fuses, the Miata wiring diagram is 80 pages! So once I get all that Miata stuff out and sell it, I'm going to be looking for a rust bucket or crash damaged or otherwise not very expensive MGB, or Midget or possibly even a TR7 that I can use a donor to get this thing going again! Just needs to be not thousands of miles from my home in Sonoma County California.
I have a car I doubt you've seen before. It's a 1951 Simca 8 Sport. Simca in this period made Fiat's in France under license. The 8 Sport has a hand made aluminum body designed by Stabilmenti Farina (older brother of Pinin Farina). It originally had a 40hp 1220cc engine. My car has a plaque on the dash saying it was in the Palm Springs races in 1954. At some point, it was crashed. There was some minor frame damage and the front sheet metal was replaced with parts from the later Simca Sport 9, a different design. I bought it in 2018. It had been sitting in a field for about 20 years and had no engine or transmission, the floor was rusted out and most of the interior was gone. The father of the guy I bought it from was a collector of small special Italian cars, and he bought in 1978 because it had a Siata engine at that time.
So why am I on this British forum? These cars are rare and very pretty, but not valuable. My plan is to make it fun to drive and easy to maintain. '51 Simca (or Fait) parts are not easy to get and so I have MGB front and rear suspension and brakes. My original plan was a Miata engine and I bought and installed one about 3 years ago. Since then I've been struggling with the wiring. I am missing a few suspension bits and a few months ago I looked at a flood damaged MGB for sale. When I looked at that engine, I suddenly thought "What the heck am I doing? I should just make it all simple, MG or maybe Triumph". The MG only had a few fuses, the Miata wiring diagram is 80 pages! So once I get all that Miata stuff out and sell it, I'm going to be looking for a rust bucket or crash damaged or otherwise not very expensive MGB, or Midget or possibly even a TR7 that I can use a donor to get this thing going again! Just needs to be not thousands of miles from my home in Sonoma County California.
