So went to a country fair with the usual classic car section. Saw a mk3 MG Midget red 1971 1275cc for sale at just under £8,000. A bit pricey but in very good nick. Was love at first sight and very tempted. However it would mean parting with my mk2.5 1.6 MX5 for space reasons and that car has been absolutely fine of course. Anyone on here who has or currently owns a Midget who could advise if I would be barking mad to take the plunge. I am not mechanically minded. The 5 has been faultless to date.
are they giving away a pair of overalls and a box full of spanners with the car
An ex-work colleague of mine has a Midget and a Sprite. He will tackle any jobs on the car apart from spraying. Spends many many happy hours working on them. He uses one as a fun / weekend / second car while rebuilding the other. When the rebuild is finished he uses that while rebuilding the first. Then the cycle starts again. Does this answer your question?
WALK AWAY!!!
Nostalgia ain’t what it used to be - - - - - - 
The car is selling for 2X more than yours is worth, simple mechanics yes, bullet proof - no car is, or was.
I very nearly bought a restored TD - for £14k, then came to my sensed and bought my MX new for £15K. Vive la difference.
Sold my Mk1 Merlot to a petrol head who wanted a soft top to drive around in…
… while he restored his MG
Not being mechanically minded is fine if you don’t mind paying repair and breakdown bills on a regular basis. The MX5 has transformed the ownership of a “None sensible car” into the car that makes total sense when you want a none sensible car. If that makes sense.
A ticklish little problem this, and one which I sympathise with.
If you’re anything like me, Midgets / Sprites (and also I admit, Spitfires and MGBs too) are so damn cute, that they tug on the heart strings, make you go all gooey-eyed, and make you want them. The trouble is, and as a patriotic Englishman it hurts to admit this, they were not very well built back in the day, and the chances are that you will have to spend as much time giving it TLC at the weekends than actually driving it. All very well if one is mechanically-minded, and likes tinkering, but you’ve already said that you are not.
By comparison, MX-5s are so well engineered and so well built, and hence so reliable, that doing a swop as you have suggested, seems to me total madness. If you could keep both cars, that would be a different matter, but you have already said the 5 would have to go.
Apart from sheer patriotic emotion, I can’t honestly see why you should want to give up your MX-5, which you have admitted has been faultless to date, and gamble on an almost fifty-year-old car which will be slower, less comfortable, and probably less reliable too.
Of course the thing is, you are only human, and humans fall in love and do stupid, illogical things (been there, done that, worn the T-shirt !).
Whatever you decide to do - good luck.
The MG TD would now be worth at least twice that amount, and you 5 is now worth £???
Dont do it !!
Thanks for your posts! Chris you have hit the nail on the head. The Midget was so damn cute I fell in love with it. I’m sure you are right that it would be very high maintenance and probably more trouble in the long run. Heart over head type thing. Maybe if I can find more space I could have both and keep the MG as a very occasional outing car and an ‘investment’
That’s right - if you can find the extra space, and of course if you can afford it, then keeping both would be the ideal solution wouldn’t it ?
I’m envious already !
Before I bought my MX5, I owned a Marina based Marlin kitcar for a year. My very hard learned lesson was that kitcars (and I suspect MG Midgets and most “classic” cars) are really only suitable purchases if you are able to do all (or certainly the majority) of the work on the car yourself. For people who have the skills, tools and workshop facilities, much of the pleasure of owning such a vehicle is the constant “tinkering” that is required. For owners like me who just wanted to drive my car, they can be a nightmare. My Marlin turned out to be a real money pit and it was getting really difficult to find a garage that was even prepared to work on the car. Most garages want a quick turnaround and want instant diagnosis, instant availability of spare parts and instant payment of an enormous bill at the end! That’s not necessarily the case with a car like the Midget, and certainly wasn’t the case with my Marlin.
My advice would be to stick with what you have!
Paul
A cousin of mine bought a classic car (Triumph I think) as an “investment”. Trouble was he had neither the skills, facilities, funds or time it needed and very soon his “investment” was a rotting pile of junk on his drive that he had to pay to have removed. I would say that unless you have ALL of the above and a good deal of patience, don’t let you heart rule your head, it WILL lead to heartbreak and headaches!
Back in the late seventies, I had two MG Midgets - from the age of 19 to 22. Each was a ‘daily driver’ - 50 miles a day, so if they broke, I had to fix them, kerbside. Back then there were plentiful spares from breaker’s yards, so I got to know the 1275 Mk3 pretty well. To be honest, mine were pretty reliable - apart from once when I was let down by a faulty electric fuel pump (a common issue with Spridgets). The quality of reconditioned lever-arm shocks was appalling (at least the cheap ‘reconditioned’ units that I seemed to fit for every other MoT!). But I loved them.
Fast forward to 2000, with kids grown, and a little more spare time and cash, I hankered after a concourse Midget - and after much searching, decided to build my own. A long, nationwide search ended up with me buying a totally rusted out but 100% original and complete one-owner 1971 car that was stored in a garage 5 miles from where I lived. After a lot of heart-searching (and overtime) I bought a Heritage bodyshell, and over a period of four years, commenced on a nut-and-bolt restoration - building a better-than-new Midget which was pretty identical to the one I had in 1979. Some small but subtle improvements along the way (engine taken out to 1293cc, 276 cam, Maniflow exhaust and manifold, single fat SU carb, decent inlet manifold, braided brake hoses, Greenstuff pads, solid state SU fuel pump, electric fan, Polybushes all round) it was a nippy and pretty delight. However, after about 12 years, I started getting bored with it - there was no tinkering to do! I contemplated a Frontline suspension set up, as I never felt comfortable on the limit with the lever-arm shocks, but in the end the whole car just felt ‘old-fashioned’ (which I get is kind of the idea). I did love the Midget, but decided to scratch my long-standing MX-5/Eunos itch. So I sold the Midget for £8500. It was immaculate - literally zero rust and still in better than ‘showroom’ condition. I’ve never regretted the decision - my Euni are thoroughly modern, better engineered, solid and ‘planted’ cars than my Midget ever was - but they both offer that cheap, two-seater, wind-in-the-hair fun.
It’s a very personal decision, and one that only you can take. But because I’m a reasonably proficient DIY-er (I restored the Midget from scratch and knew every single nut, bolt and washer) - the car WAS reliable, and it never let me down over about 12k miles. The little niggles that occurred, I was able to sort quickly and easily myself. But if you can find a Midget like that - bought from an enthusiast - with a known provenance or rebuild history - then it definitely CAN be a reliable, fun, cheap little sports car, despite what the naysayers may, err, say.
Steve
Forget it
Steve is of course quite right, you CAN make a Midget reliable and trustworthy.
However, he is obviously a proficient and knowledgeable, mechanically-minded individual, who renovated his Midget from the ground up, and succeeded in making his example (almost) as good as an MX-5 is without having to do any work on it !
If one is not as mechanically-savvy as Steve, then the chances are that owning an almost fifty-year-old British classic car is likely to be more trouble than it is worth - despite what the heart says !
Well I think you are right. Seduced by an attractive looking car but it isn’t a replacement for the MX5. Wasn’t helped by a near neighbour driving past in his BRG sunbeam alpine today! Trouble is the Midget is available for sale by another neighbour! It’s only going to be an investment if I can maintain it at its current condition which will cost. So the head says no. Perhaps at some time in the future I’ll get hold of a mint Mk1 MX5 just like I had in the late 90s!
I bought a Midget back in 1968, a 1966 car, really loved it, but it proved quite troublesome. When I sold it in 1972 rot was developing very fast. Did think about buying another in 2002 but bought an MX-5 instead, glad, I did still have it