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Q. Have you noticed there always seems to be an Q. And then?
?odd set of circumstances? involved with finding and
t
A. I couldn? resist a viewing, so I drove to
buying a car? What happened to you?
Clarksville, WV, and talked to the owner. The car
A. In the spring of 1974, a friend at work told me of was deplorable and I doubted that it had any
an MG of ?some kind? at a local body shop in Ohio. future beyond further neglect or scrappage.
Upon investigation, I found the car to have been
misidentified because its attached UK registration
plate started with the letters MG. The car?s lines
were very nice and I learned it was a 1934 Riley,
basically an unknown brand to me.
Being somewhat entranced, I contacted the owner
only to discover that the car was not for sale but his
MGTD was! Although it was tempting, I knew
someone who was actually looking for a TD and we
conspired to buy that car for him but my association
Above: It had also been involved in a fatal accident in
with the seller led to ?some? Riley Knowledge.
San Bernadino, California in 1939.
Within a week, my wife?s uncle called with another I really felt that leaving the car there would
opportunity. In a Caterpillar equipment scrap/repair bother me more than taking it home. So, I
yard in West Virginia, he?d found a 1937 English car negotiated an axle shaft repair and a new
with the MGTC features of 2 seats, fold-down battery as part of the deal and $600 was
windshield, cut-down doors and big wire wheels. promised.
Very exciting!
I then returned home and reconnected with the
However, it (below) also had a missing rear body Ohio Lynx owner to borrow his books and figure
panel, a broken axle, and a Studebaker driveline. out what I?d bought. The surviving remains had
once been a Riley Sprite and, under the right
circumstances, I discovered it should be a pretty
nice looking car!
The Sprite with its original owner Maurice Smith
Two weeks later my wonderful father and I
borrowed a car trailer and dragged the Sprite
While such crappy condition was pretty sad, the car home in 1974 to a seriously unimpressed wife.
was also cheap ($600) and it was ?a Riley. My promise to fix it up a bit by ?popping? in a
Datsun driveline and actually making it run was
Perhaps this was, I thought, a ?brush with fate?. even less well received Continued on page 31
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