Living in Abingdon since 1975, I always been aware of the presence of MG and several of my school friends grandparents and parents had worked there, some virtually since the car factory had come to Abingdon in the late 20's, so it seemed rather inevitable that at some stage I would own a proper one (the Metro Turbo had an MG badge on it but was made in Longbridge). My MG Midget was quite a culture shock after the relative comfort and up-to-date safety of the Fiats and other cars I'd owned, really the Midget was designed in the mid 50's and originally released as the Frog-eye Sprite, this showed very much and was always present when driving the car. The size of the thing always amazes me, I had never had so much garage space to play with but then I'd never had to work on my own car unvoluntarily before !

The most enjoyable side of the car was the soft-top which could be kept down for a great amount of the time, also even though its 1500 Triumph Spitfire sourced engine was archaic in design it still had more power and more notably lots more torque than the X1/9's meagre 1290cc lump. One side of MG ownership which really 'makes' owning one is the MG Car Club, a nicer bunch of people you could not wish to meet and of course especially living in Abingdon, even 8 or 9 years after the factory had shut many people still knew what the cars were.

I have many fond memories of the Midget some good, like the numerous MG car club events I attended, and some not so good like the cars affinity to boil itself dry time after time which was really annoying (when I asked a specialist about this it was pointed out that 'they just do it') to the point that eventually I decided to sell it.

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