MGB GT - Why Did I Buy One?!

hi welcome back to the channel and welcome back to my 1967 mgb gt regular channel will know that this is my car that i've had for a while since 2013 in fact and on this rather damp and dreary day i'm taking the car out for a bit of a drive to warm it up as part of another video i've made about a bit of a seafoam experiment that i was doing and as i was driving i was kind of thinking i've not really gone into too much around what makes the mgb so appealing to me and why i bought it so i'm gonna find somewhere to pull over and go through a few reasons why i bought this car and why i think it's potentially a goodbye for yourself so i'll join you in a few moments when i pulled over okay so here we are then park down a country lane which is arguably the mgb's habitat and uh the first thing to really say about an mgb is its popularity so they did make a lot of them they made sort of half a million roadsters and gts during the years of production and for serious collectors this is a bit of a turn off because it means that you haven't really got an exclusive car and when you go to car shows there's going to be several of these quite often parked up but for me that's a huge advantage for anybody who wants to get into classic cars because it means that prices are relatively low and because the production sort of spanned 18 years or so and went through a few uh cosmetic changes there's often an mgb for every budget so you've got your more expensive early pool handle roadsters which are kind of the collector sort of ones really um but you can probably get a later rubber bumper be running and driving as a rolling restoration for maybe a couple of thousand pounds i'm not really too sure of the current market value of those cars but certainly you can get yourself an interesting car for not very much outlay and then the advantage of course is the popularity means that you end up with a car that is very serviceable so you can get spare parts there are specialists who will do engine rebuilds and the like gearbox rebuilds different builds um so you're never really going to be without parts of the car or trying to search high and low for you know unobtainable spare parts there are one or two things which are no longer sold but often there's a decent replacement or an alternative and uh also the car has a fairly decent scene in terms of um um improving and modification so if you wanted to do like a hot rod version of an mgb and you can probably drop a v8 in there i mean it was a factory v8 but a lot of people do a conversion on the roadsters and that kind of thing so there's enough sort of support out there to keep you to keep you going okay so the the next thing that makes me think the mgb is a great buy is uh looking under looking under the bonnet and mechanicals of of the car so what you're going to find under here is not a fast engine or powerful engine or anything that is a particularly high tech which a lot of people kind of see as a disadvantage as well i guess of you know bees are notoriously known for being slow and that kind of thing but you know they they race fairly successfully in periods so i think that's a little bit unfounded um but but what attracts me to this particular car and uh the mechanical side of things it's just the amount of space to to work on it so i mean for the home mechanic if you want to learn a bit about uh how an engine works or how to service your car and that kind of stuff then the mgb is extremely easy to work on and everything sort of like within hands reach of uh being able to do it yourself and you learn a thing or two along along the way and the same goes for sort of the brakes and the suspension and that kind of stuff i mean i've got some extra bits on mine so i see new wheels but you can see sort of drilled and grooved uh discs behind there um and also on the back i've got some telescopic uh dampers which you might not be able to see actually but um you know all stuff which is relatively easy to to do to a car it means you can tinker with it and that then becomes um your hobby if you're if you're into that and i think that's kind of what owning this car is all about it becomes a hobby and and it becomes part of your um sort of enjoyment of the car i suppose so that's that's really like another another big reason why i would choose this car okay so we kind of come on to the the third and perhaps final reason why i love the mgb so much and it has to be its charm so in terms of the way it looks i think it's a really good looking car i don't think you're going to get similar sort of classic looks for the money certainly and you know i've joked in other videos about making comparisons as a sort of poor man's e-type or aston martin and that is kind of pushing my luck a bit kind of comparing them to those cars um and they're sort of quirky uh outside details on this car which you wouldn't see dead in a more expensive model like that but you know you're getting classic 60s looks for a fraction of the price of those those types of true sort of dream cars and it's not just the outside which i think is charming i think it extends into the cabin as well with this classic crackle black finish dashboard i mean i've fitted a wooden steering wheel but the the original one was a very classic bakelite one there and obviously um leather interior which some of them came with although this is again aftermarket um and it's just going from like a modern daily to this it feels very different and crucially special and it feels like an occasion when you take this car out i mean there's a bit of preparation and worry i guess is it doesn't quite fire into life on the first try maybe on some days but i'm going quite often it does sort of style fine and i guess that's kind of where you'd have to make a decision so this car obviously isn't a modern car it does have its quirks and uh does need sort of care and attention every now and again and i guess the main rival um to this car if you're going to consider uh reliability and that kind of thing and if you're interested in sort of modern performance you're probably going to compare this car to maybe a mark one mx-5 so those cars are really great i really love mx-5s and i hate making comparisons between cars because they are quite subjective sometimes and um i don't want to hate on anybody's car or anything and quite often i'll be talking about a car i'm interested and i like mx-5s i'm not gonna bash them but i do think the mgb is uh more charming than an mx-5 even though the mx-5 is faster more reliable uh has equally good or better um third-party support in terms of um people working on them and parts availability etc etc um but for me this is my third mgb gt i love this uh this model car and it gives me great sort of satisfaction driving it and maintaining it so that's that's why i bought it um so yeah i mean i don't think there's anything else really to say except uh hope you like this video hope you enjoyed getting a bit of an insight as to why i bought this car and why i'll probably continue to always have an mgb in my um sort of fleet garage whatever you want to call it um and uh maybe i've encouraged you to do the same or encourage you to get an mx5 i don't know but yeah thank you so much for watching and check out some of my other videos if you're interested in mgbs and until the next time i'll see you later bye [Music] you

Channel: granblogismo

Views: 25,864

Rating: 4.9728355 out of 5

Keywords: Mgb, Mgbgt, Mg b gt, MGB gt, Mg c, MGC, MGC gt, Mgcgt, Mg c gt, Mg midget

Id: ZlPgQHq5-eM

Length: 8min 17sec (497 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 18 2020