Pat Vilbrandt <pwv@tc.fluke.COM> gives us all a good chuckle:
Scott Fisher <sfisher@wsl.dec.com> goes "New" Car Shopping:
>
> The Brand New 1971 MGB...
^^^^
Normally when someone fails to read something I've written and froths
at the mouth while demonstrating their own lack of simple reading skills,
I get to have all kinds of fun throwing out outre' classical allusions,
historical references to Shakespeare and Milton, and end up calling
them A) a diseased piece of apocrypha or B) something equally unpleasant.
In this case, however, Pat, you can't even claim that it's some fuzzy-studies
wordsmith literary mumbo-jumbo tripe that you couldn't be bothered with in
Ingarniering Skool -- it's plain old NUMBERS, just like you see on a DMM...
He said "New". (Didn't he say New?) Yes, I think he said "New".
He also said "1971."
> [more interesting figures on the "cost" of a new MGB]
I'm sure that you realize that you left off a few minor details, like the
modifications to the engine, and the new PI mainifold, and the ECU, and the
catalytic exhaust system that you'd also have to design and build to get it
to meet new (there's that word again!) regulations. Oh yes, then there'd
be the structural changes to the body & bumpers, the addition of the
"cyclops" rear light, the necessary sheet metal modifications... Oh yes,
then you'd just need a few $Million to get it certified by the EPA et.
al., before you could license it.
All those are no doubt valid problems for the Austin-Rover Group's
"new" 1993 MGB RV8, and are for that matter almost certainly the
reason that the car is not planned for US delivery. They are,
as fascinating as they may be in a study of Not Paying Attention,
meaningless for someone selling a "brand new" 1971 car. (They
are more applicable to Morgan, a company selling 1954 cars that
must meet 1993 specifications.)
Why this is germane to this list: the British Motor Heritage group
in Britain is in the process of making "new" components that are
designed as replacements for "old" components. They began with
MGB body shells, made using original equipment but of high-quality steel
that is then cold-galvanized using the best modern techniques; Sprite
and Midget bodyshells have followed, and apparently the BMH group has
also located the tooling for TR6 body panels to supplement the new
TR6 chassis that TRF has been selling for a while. Those of us with
later and more "popular" LBCs actually have the option of having a
"brand-new" version of our beloved cars from 1969, 1974, or whenever,
with modern rustproofing and no metal fatigue.
This was much publicized a few years ago when some BMH folks came
through the US with a 1968 MGB that they had assembled on one of these
"new" body shells using parts from a donor car (including the all-
important VIN plate, which makes it a 1968 vehicle) and components
from The Roadster Factory (who was a major sponsor) and a few other
big-time mail-order suppliers.
Road and Track even did a partial road test of the car. I've seen
advertisements in a number of the British sports-car magazines for
similar "new" MGBs made to order from whatever year you fancy and
can find a title for; as recently as this spring these "new" old MGBs
were offered at ten thousand pounds or so, a figure which, while
still high, is not as absurd as forty-thousand and some dollars.
(Oh, right. Ten thousand pounds, as of the news report I saw a
couple days ago, is $19,200 American; the exchange rate might be
different by now. For the numerically impaired, this means you
could buy two of the "new" MGBs from Britain for the price of one
of these "new" MGBs from the fellow in Massachusetts, and maybe
even have enough left to ship them across the Atlantic, depending
on what "low forties" means.)
Anyway, the "new old car" business is booming. Check out any major
auto magazine for articles on the "new" 1965 Cobra 427SCs that
Carroll Shelby is offering for sale. This is a little different;
Shelby claims to have found 43 original SC chassis in his basement
or somewhere and has managed to put together at least one complete
"new" 1965 Cobra to scare a few editors. I don't know of any stashes
of Britcars still packed in cosmoline and lost, between the Ark
of the Covenant and Jimmy Hoffa's corpse, in some dim government
warehouse. Stranger things have happened.
Actually, Scott, I know that you don't really want a "new" MGB - what you
really want is a '68 MGB that has never been driven before and has been
stored for the past 25 years in a hermetically sealed garage filled with
dry nitrogen.
When you find someone who can tell you what the numbers "1971" mean,
you might have them subtract 68 from 92 for you as well...
And what I also didn't address is what a new MGB is *worth* - only what
it might *cost*!
Well, that's a relief anyway. Who knows what other horrors you would
have perpetrated on elementary arithmetic? Two examples of functional
innumeracy in a single posting are quite enough, thanks.
--Scott "A calculator is NOT a toy" Fisher
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