MG Car Club of South Australia
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MGC NEWS MGC conversations by Richard Mixture, March 2017
MGCs Down Under
ello, it’ s Richard here again with another story. You know that nice young Register co-ordinator, Ian, well he and his wife invited Mrs Mixture and me around for lunch one Sunday recently. His wife asked Ian and me how many articles had we( I think she meant me) written for the Club? I thought maybe 25 or so and Ian thought it must be at least 30! Well it turns out to be 130 articles over the last 12 years. I was so staggered I had to sit down and have a cup of English Breakfast.
Well that nice young fella’ s wife, pretty thing she is too, ask“ why don’ t you two write a book?” Ian rolled his eyes and said“ yeah one day”. Well that was last year and now Ian tells me he has a book nearly ready to go! Blimey, he’ s a fast worker. He’ s been to Melbourne and he’ s been to Brisbane talking to MGC owners, even to that nice old Queenslander Bruce, and he’ s taken lots of photos, hundreds he tells me.
He showed me the contents page the other day and it looks very interesting. He’ s going to call it“ MGCs Down Under”. What a good name. The first chapter describes a bit of MGC history, just for the uninitiated mind you, and tells about the Aussie link, you know the Australian built Blue Streak engine that the Factory trialled in a‘ B’. The next chapter is about Bruce’ s story; yes he is a nice old Queenslander. Then there are Bruce’ s tech tips. Well, after owning an MGC for
26 nearly 50 years I guess you’ d have to know a thing or two about them wouldn’ t you? Then after that there are more tech tips from yours truly, I bet you were wondering when I’ d be featuring. This will include some of the articles that have featured in the Club magazine over the past 12 years. I still can’ t believe it’ s that long!
Next there are several personal stories of eight MGC owners both in Australia and New Zealand. The Kiwi owners have been leading lights in the NZ Register endeavouring to identify every MGC in the islands of the Long White Cloud. There’ s a story about the NZ Register Historian’ s red roadster and one on his assistant’ s Old English White GT. There are a couple of stories about two beautifully restored cars, again one GT and one roadster; the GT is an English car brought back to Australia by an Aussie visitor to that nascent land way back in the‘ 80s and the other is an imported North American car. Then there’ s a story about the historic racer that needed a bit more grunt so he supercharged his MGC and a mate who thought it was a good idea and wanted one too. Both supercharged cars are red roadsters. Of course red is a good colour for a roadster so there’ s a story about a grey haired gentleman with a nicely restored English car up thar in them hills and one describing a blue one up thar in them Hinterlands. The blue roadster is the earliest Car in the Aus-