I’ll kick off 2010 with warm wishes to you all for a happy and prosperous year. At the time of writing (early December), the South West Centre programme of events for the coming year has yet to be finalised. However, I do have two dates for your diaries; the Annual Dinner is at the Limpley Stoke Hotel (near Bath) on Saturday 12th of February (check the website or contact John Bird on 0117 956 0175 for details) and the Centre Annual General Meeting is at the Ring O’ Bells at Compton Martin (in the Chew valley, South of Bristol) on Tuesday the 12th of March.
As there’s not much else to report event-wise, I thought I’d fill you in on MG happenings in the Lock family. Having decided to get the GT out of the garage in February for it’s first blast of the year, I was surprised – no shocked – when it started first time! The happiness lasted only seconds, however, as I realised that the clutch had given up the ghost. On closer inspection, it turned out to be a leaking slave cylinder; so not a disaster, should be able to fix that in an hour or so I thought. Nine months later and I’ve got the day off work tomorrow to make a start… But the year hasn’t been a dead loss from an MG perspective as I decided that the time was right to invest (!) in an MG TF – the new kind, rather than the 50’s version. Having looked at several bangers (including several with mayonnaise for coolant and one in ‘immaculate condition’ notwithstanding the hand-painted repair on the rear quarter), I found a nice Solar Red TF160 with low mileage, Oxford Leather, hardtop and air conditioning. So what do I think of it? Well the ride is dreadful, the steering soggy and the seats about as supportive as, well, something not very supportive at all. And the water level drops over time; not lots, but enough for me to worry that it’s something more than ‘finding it’s own level’ and top it up again. So is it all bad? No, absolutely not! Far from it; in fact, the more I test it’s limits, the more I appreciate the finer points of the car. If you haven’t tried one, or have only had a test drive with the seller in the car, you’ll not realise the performance potential. The engine sings when that VVC mechanism kicks in and the handling is amazing now that I’ve put some decent tyres on it and had the tracking reset. We made our competitive debut (me and the car, as a team) at the Bristol Pegasus Chepstow Autosolo and I was shocked, no stunned, at the way the car can be chucked around. First time out, and being careful because I didn’t fancy telling Michèle that I dinged the car when we’d only had it a fortnight, I found myself only a second or two off the pace of John Delafield in his modified Midget. Result! Plans were hastily drawn up for a season of competition culminating – in winning the SW Centre Drivers Championship. Of course, family life intervened and we only managed another two events – plus the run up to MGLive! at Silverstone. Albeit on a non-competitive basis, the TF proved somewhat more nimble than the Midgets and MGB of the California Cup winning team from the Lincolnshire Centre who complained that I had set the demonstration autotest too tight!
