SA Roadtests
South Africa
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This is the home of automobile road tests in South Africa. We drive South African cars, SUVs and LCVs under South African conditions. It also just happens that most of the vehicles we drive are world cars as well, so what you read here probably applies to the models you can get at home.
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*Please remember too, that prices quoted were those ruling on the days I wrote the reports.
Pics supplied by restorer
Originally published in Weekend Witness Motoring on Saturday April 30, 2011
as part of the publicity build-up to Weekend Witness/VSCC Cars in the Park, 2011
People make plans, but life gets in the way. So it was with Ian Grieve. After school, he wanted to study medicine in Cape Town. Life saw to it that he read the Hippocratic arts at Trinity College, Dublin, instead. While there, he owned an MG TC and the damage, as they say, was done. Back home in Pietermaritzburg, life went on, but one day during the 'seventies the MG bug bit again. He purchased a pile of parts purporting to be a complete TC, with firm intent to rebuild it. It's on a row of shelves in his garage at home, waiting its turn.
A more approachable project, in the form of a 1954 MG TF 1250, came his way a few years later. This was noticeably complete, standing on its wheels and recognisable. It just didn't run and the fine old English Ash framework had succumbed to dry rot. The car was disassembled during the 'eighties with imminent intent to restore, but living got in the way again and it also wound up on garage shelves. Grieve retired in 2007 after 40 years as a family doctor in ‘Maritzburg and following the long-awaited extended safari into Africa, looked around for something to do.
Life then apologised for past interferences by stepping in with a Grand Sign during a visit to Weekend Witness/VSCC Cars in the Park the following year. A magnificently restored TF belonging to Charles Rilett caught his eye and Grieve knew that the time had come. Work began in earnest during 2009.
Rust was brushed, buffed and cut away, rotten panels patched or replaced and most of the wooden framework remade in Meranti and heavy plywood; genuine Ash doesn't grow on trees in this neck of the woods you know. How to remake a wooden part that's rotted away to a fraction of what it should be? Take what you have, measure carefully then remake it according to the drawing in the parts book. After that, you trim and shape so it fits within the space in the metal.
The chassis had to be stripped of rust, repaired and repainted, while every other body part required thorough cleaning, panel beating as necessary and repainting or replating. Metal parts damaged beyond repair or rusted away had to be remade using basic tools and old-fashioned ingenuity. Then there was the matter of upholstery, as very little had withstood the ravages of time. As Grieve says: "I didn't really learn new skills as such. It was simply a case of solving problems as I went along." New skills ‘not learned’ and problems overcome, included spray-painting, panel beating, upholstery, soldering, fabrication of parts, brazing, carpentry and rust removal.
There is an easier way; it's called ‘cheque-book restoration.’ It entails fitting new parts to replace every one that's worn or shabby. It sounds ideal because practically every MG component one could possibly need can be imported at a price, but what prices? Front wings, for instance, are freely available at £ 980 each; plus freight and duties, wharfage, landing, clearing and forwarding and VAT. It gets quite exciting before too long. But where is the challenge?
Luckily, this MG's wings were in good shape, but among the items Grieve figured out how to reproduce were a pair of bonnet strip supports, the little brackets the long centre hinge pin of the bonnet fits into, at either end. These are available from the old country at 'only' £ 9.15 each plus all the other charges mentioned earlier, but far more interesting to cut and shape from mild steel sheet for a Rand or two. It's not all ‘making do’ though; he does admit to having gathered and hoarded ‘a few’ MG parts over the intervening thirty-odd years.
A guaranteed way of spending heaps of money is the concours d'élégance route, in which case you eventually have a car that costs so much, you're afraid to take it off its show trailer. Those who do so are to be admired, but Grieve does not subscribe to the notion. In his view, the whole point of nostalgia is that you revisit the fun and sensations of driving the car you enjoyed when you were young. That is why his TF will ultimately harbour a few pirated parts, non-imperial fasteners and perhaps even a modern alternative, here and there. The aim is to produce a nimble, sporty driving machine that he can enjoy, despite life’s little interruptions, for years to come.
The final picture in this gallery is of how the car looks today; in mid-May 2013.
Rusty junk or golden opportunity? This TC has a long restoration path ahead of it.
Sometimes, you just have to do it yourself
Ian Grieve about to recover a door panel
Getting there, but still a long way to go
Two years on, and "Migs" is ready for showing
This is a one-man show, which means that road test cars entrusted to me are driven only by me. Some reviewers hand test cars over to their partners to use as day-to-day transport and barely experience them for themselves.
What this means to you is that every car reviewed is given my own personal evaluation and receives my own seat of the pants judgement - no second hand input here.
Every car goes through real world testing; on city streets littered with potholes, speed bumps and rumble strips, on freeways and if its profile demands, dirt roads as well.
I am based in Pietermaritzburg, KZN, South Africa. This is the central hub of the KZN Midlands farming community; the place farmers go to to buy their supplies and equipment, truck their goods to market, send their kids to school and go to kick back and relax.
So occasionally a cow, a goat or a horse may add a little local colour by finding its way into the story or one of the pictures. It's all part of the ambience!
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SA Roadtests
South Africa
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