Found this gem in a depressed state in a used car lot. Filthy with 4 bald tires and all Jag emblems missing. 

Around fifty years ago while still at school, I helped a school friend and his elder brother build a Lotus Seven from a kit of parts. It took around three or four weekends to get the car onto the road and it was a delight.

When I was a small child in the years following world war two, very few people had, or could indeed, afford to own a car. The bicycle was the prominent form of transport for most ordinary people, and the ownership of a motorcycle was largely the province of the middle classes.

I purchased my TD while I was stationed in San Francisco with the US Army in 1974. I had owned a british car (68 Austin Sprite) while in college, but really did not know a lot about MGTD's.

Back in 1974, I was a private in the US Army stationed at the Presidio of San Francisco. On our local bulletin board was an ad for a MGTD for sale. I had been looking for a British sports car for a bit, so I went to see the car. The TD was in pretty poor shape..

1973 Triumph Stag, the car James Bond drove in 007, with a custom paint job, Candy burgundy color. Corvette V8 350 high performance motor, 4 bolt mains, 11 to 1 compression, automatic tranny, power everything, hard top and rag top convertible and T leather roll bar.

I purchased the car from a gentleman in Muncie, Indiana. He did not know much about the car's history other than he thought it had been owned by a professor at Ball State University.

I traded an AH3000 MK3 for this car in 1969. It was the second time I had owned a Dart, the first was in 1960 when I traded an Alfa 1300 for a used A-spec car (chassis#248). This 1962 B-spec (chassis#849) and I have covered about 120,000 miles together; less than 10,000 of them in the past 20+ years. As is so typical with classic British sports cars, mine had a mechanical problem and was parked in the garage for a dozen years or so.

I finally retired in 2007 from the Navy, moved back to Oklahoma, and in 2008 started the restoration project of a well preserved 30 year old Lotus with 55,000 miles on it. I took my time paying attention to the details and quirks of a British sports car and finished up in 2012 more or less...nothing is really done.

The MG has been there since the beginning of my parent’s relationship and was a wedding anniversary gift from my Mother to my Father. The car was the natural progression from a Bug Eye Sprite, their first foray into British motoring, to a little more refined automobile.