It doesn't look too bad, does it? But beneath that nice exterior, there's about 30 hours of welding required to make my wee MX5 Gleneagles roadworthy. As mentioned in my previous post, the cost of repairing the rusty metal inboard of the rear wings was too great for me. That task has now fallen to Iain Scoular, the new owner of my car.
Iain's an interesting guy. He's an ex-engineer who went back to university to become a minister. He and his wife race cars in their spare time. He also rides a Harley Davidson and says it helps him get his message across when he turns up for school assemblies on his powerful bike. It's not often the minister is cooler than the high school kids.
My MX5 will be Mrs Scoular's regular transport. I'm sure she'll have great fun with it and that it will prove a reliable car. It didn't let me down once in seven years. Great handling, good economy, 100% reliability, wind-in-the-hair motoring (or wind-over-the-scalp in my case), a cheeky character. What's not to like?
It's difficult to say how much I'd been looking forward to getting my car back on the road after it had spent the last 30 months sitting in the drive. There's an MX5 owners club meeting in Pitlochry next month and I'd intended to turn up in my newly-renovated roadster. That was before the bad news from the garage about the rot.
I took this picture in an effort to achieve closure but it hasn't worked. Everywhere I look I see MX5s. I've since noticed that I pass a Mk1 when driving to the golf course with the dogs. I'd never seen it before. Just last night we were watching the film, Loopers. What car does the main character drive? Yup, a Mk1 MX5. I just about fell off the couch when I saw that. The only consolation is that my MX5 has gone to a good home and will, in due course, be racing along country roads again - just without me at the wheel.
So that's me car-less for the first time since I passed my driving test about 30 years ago and, given the state of our finances, it's unlikely that will change any time soon. Bummer.
It's sad when your old friends go - I remember feeling the same about our old Polo . . on the positive side, view it as a weight off your mind and money in your pocket!
ReplyDeletePhil
Sorry to hear about your MX5. Rust from British roads....? In America they are called Miata. That would help me separate. My brother had one in Melbourne and did for a while in California. A client of mine imported an ingenious turbo kit for the MX5 and drives one himself. Sorry.
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