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At 11:08 AM 3/6/05 -0500, David Munro wrote:
The attached recent picture is the MG-A I've owned since building
it in 1961. I was helped then by Bob Lester, who ran a foreign
car repair shop in South Shore and then Hyde Park; until he was
killed in a TR-3 at Road America about 4 years later.
It is
a stock MGA 1600, plus a LaDawri shell and more fiberglass work and acetone baths for me than
I care to remember. The car came to me in '61 when I was 15; asking
my folks for an MG by the time I was 16. I was hoping for a clapped
out TD I might be able to nurse to life. Knowing my Scottish dad, I
never dreamed of a then current A..
Sooo: I was challenged with a rolled 12-month old A with crumpled
fenders and this even newer one that had suffered an interior fire.
Bingo; one quickly unrolled A and one rolling chassis; and dad
saying we'd have to put some clothes on that big go-Kart!
Eventually, this one emerged and sale of the other paid the bills..
For the ensuing 44 years, my father or I have used it as a driver or
parked it out of irritation at the squirming to get in past the wrap
around windscreen; then the cycle resumed. Or, I get irritated that
something's broken that I know I've repaired; forgetting at first
that the repair was 20 years back! Today, it's my sunny day car in
Daytona, which is nicely common. It does have a top and even
built-in pivoting side windows in the doors. It's been used at
various times as a commuting car in Chicago, Boston, and Washington
DC.
(And at the same time in 1961), .... Bob Lester had built and had
in his shop a radical MG-A, the later whereabouts I've long wondered
about; until now. I'm more than 99% certain that it is the car in
your modified body pics labeled "Hawk, built by Bob West." I
recall this car in Lester's shop initially without the blower and
long scoop, and then those being added by about 1963. It was not
just a radical custom, but also beautifully finished inside and out.
David Munro,
Spruce Creek Fly-In, Daytona Beach |
