Mascots at British Car Festival

The pride of ownership of classic cars is often shown in the accessories intended to personalize those cars- to set them off from similar vehicles. At car shows, stuffed animals and other plush toys are common. We've all seen the pouting toddler doll that is mostly popular with the cruiser set. Thankfully they are rare in our corner of the hobby.

I took a few moments to take a few photos of some of the examples of mascots at British Car Festival 2014. Is yours here?

A Jaguar Napping in a Jaguar Engine Bay

A Very Happy Bulldog in a MINI Engine Engine Bay

A Tiger With a Tail

A Litter of Tiger Cubs in a Tiger

A Brit Bear - OK, It's Mine...

 

A Conquered Conquest

A Daimler Conquest appeared in a local scrapyard, an interim stop on a journey that will likely take it  to a steel mill in the far east. 

My British car enthusiast brother spotted the regal old girl during one of his frequent trolls through the two local "you-pull-it" scrapyards in the Mobile, Alabama area. He sent me photos by text and at first, I could not identify the car. He later found a bar code sticker applied by the scrapper that indicated that it was a 1954 Daimler Conquest. 

The car is right hand drive with Trafficator turn signals. The engine and driveline were intact but the interior was a disaster. The radiator shell and other chrome bits were AWOL, but the brass maker's plate was present. 

The plate indicates that the car was built with Daimler's "Fluid Flywheel" transmission and that it is a DJ 250 model. For you Daimler enthusiasts out there, the chassis number is 84027; the engine number is 75573. 

I'm not sure that these cars were ever officially imported to the US but in the freewheeling days before Federal restrictions it was possible to import nearly anything with wheels. Could this have been a UK diplomat's personal transportation while posted in America? We'll never know.

Forbidden Fruit

An MGF with Minnesota Plates

SABCC club president and road race fan Richard Cunningham and I recently attended The Mitty at Road Atlanta. Originally known as the Walter Mitty Challenge, this event is the annual party thrown by Historic Sportscar Racing Ltd for the enjoyment of its members. This is the place to be to check out loads of racing machinery from the pedestrian to the exotic. I'll write up an entry about the weekend soon, but I wanted to share some photos of a car I spotted in the special interest car corral.

This is an MGF. This MGF is in the US of A. According to the rules, should not be here but here it is all in its mid-engine glory. It's a 75th Anniversary edition with special badging and other unique trim. I understand that these cars were available in the silver shown here or a in color called mulberry.

Left hand drive & MPH speedo

The laws say that cars not complying with American safety and emissions standards are not eligible for importation in to the US. The MGF (and the later MG TF) were supposedly engineered to meet American standards but they were never certified. No certification - no importation. However, the law is written so that a non-complying vehicle that is 25 years old or older may be imported. That's how I got my hands on my 1973 Mini. Our Canadian neighbors are permitted to import non-complying vehicles that only 15 years old or older. 

I didn't get a chance to chat with the owner but a Facebook acquaintance did and he reports that the state of Minnesota allowed him to register the MGF but gave him a hard time because the VIN didn't check out with their database of numbers. 

What the owner may not know, is that the Federal government has been known to send US Marshals with seizure orders to collect  -and eventually crush- non-complying cars. I certainly hope that won't be the case here, but it seems mighty risky to to me.

I wish you the best of luck, Mr. MGF owner.     

Future Razor Blades

My intrepid brother, Alan, got word that there was an MGB in a local scrapyard willing to give its' all for possibly your car. He dropped by Barry's U-Pull-It in beautiful downtown Theodore, Alabama to give the old car the once over and report back if there was anything of value to us MGB drivers.

It turns out that it is a '71 model - the same year as Alan's first MG. As expected, the boot and cabin floors have pretty well  returned to the Earth from whence they came, but there are a number of useful bits left under the bonnet and in the interior. Some of the body panels could be salvaged, too. There may even be a few no longer made items - small as they may be - still on the old girl.

 It looks like it was painted in the unusual 1971-only color that BL called Bedouin and it was likely a low-spec MGB due to lack of wire wheels and overdrive.