My racing had reached a stopping point, and I had also arrived at a point in my life when everything was due to change. I had been single, working various jobs, and living the “younger person” lifestyle, but it was time to shake things up. Work towards owning, not renting. A career, not simply working jobs. A significant other, not singlehood. There was still a COAL involved, though I didn’t own it and I never drove it. Consider this COAL entry more of a “people” post with a car involved in it, rather than the other way around.
In the summer of 1985, I quit my zoo job, put the three car fleet into long-term storage, and left the country for an extended period. I had been working towards my teaching credential, and took the opportunity to move to the UK, on an exchange program, to fulfill a student teaching term. Sort of like going off to college, but with flying instead of driving, packing light, and with the understanding that there would be no road trips home. New place, new life, and mostly new friends.
During this excursion, I met my future wife, learned quite a bit about people, and discovered some of my own weaknesses and limitations. I went to the London Motor Show, bought and dived into all sorts of small, specialty British motor magazines, and wandered through an automotive environment made up of an almost completely different collection of motorcars. The older cars and trucks I saw in the UK largely filled out my real-world exposure to half of my childhood Matchbox collection, the half that did not resemble the vehicles on the American roads. Specifically, the Ford Anglia, along with the Commer and Bedford trucks, resonated with my own memories of the Matchbox miniature equivalents. And there was the little green Matchbox MG 1100/1300, with the plastic dog in the back seat, if I recall correctly.
In addition, travels across the continent acquainted me with Trabants and Skodas, and refamiliarized me with Borgwards and all the quirky French cars. My then-future wife and I accidentally ended up in East Berlin for part of a day, and visited both the Berlin Wall and the boundary fences between East Germany and West Germany. A series of big wake-up calls on how institutions can treat people. Visited my family’s ancestral stomping grounds in Bremen Germany, Amsterdam, and Salzburg Austria, and also Vicki’s family’s ancestral digs in Northern Ireland. We met relatives of hers, which she was unaware of, at the school campus where we lived and met. All in all, a delightful and adventurous turning point in my life.
At school, I was assigned a “teaching practice” position in the equivalent of a high school, about a half hour away from campus. A car pool was arranged with two other practice teachers, driven by “Peggy” (names changed), along with “Michael” and myself as passengers. Peggy owned the MG.
Peggy was tall, from Kent, and she had a striking visage, with a fair complexion but dark hair and eyes, and she carried a mien of extraordinary intensity. She had a love/hate relationship with her car, as I would come to learn. The MG may not have been the only love/hate relationship in her life. Peggy had a fierce presence, that would both intrigue and intimidate, all at the same time. In the teachers’ lounge, some of the older males were openly smitten with her (this was the “old days”, and a different time and place, so some “old school”, somewhat questionable things were said and done). Some of the adolescent boys would simply stop talking and stare in her presence, and some of the girls liked to give her the evil squinty side-eye. Peggy definitely stirred the pot, wherever she went.
Her MG was quite the little car. Basically an enlarged iteration of the original Mini, it was huge inside while somewhat small on the outside. White, with a tidy but spartan interior. The wide sweep speedometer dominated the otherwise mostly featureless dashboard. The entire interior of the car was essentially featureless, but in a roomy way. Knee room, head room, hip room, and shoulder room were ample for four full-grown people.
The car was old, it wheezed and smoked, and it drank oil. In fact, a quart needed to be added to the engine at every fill-up, and that is what created the issue between Peggy and the MG. The first day of the carpool, we drove to a nearby filling station, pooled our money, and Peggy topped off the petrol tank. Once the task was complete, Peggy retrieved a bottle of oil from the case stashed in the boot, and proceeded to add it to the engine, while attired in a shortish black dress, tights, and heels. Once the engine had been fed, she went to close the bonnet. “Slam, slam, slam”. We heard a sharp shout of “Oh bloody ‘ell!”, as she stomped her high-heeled foot onto the ground. The bonnet wouldn’t latch. Michael and I jumped out to assist, white knights that we were willing to be, but Peggy quickly pivoted and ordered us to “get back in the car”, accented with a long glare. “Yes, Miss, anything you say, Miss”, thought but not spoken. A couple more slams, and the bonnet was fastened and we were on our way. Not a further word was spoken about the incident.
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Peggy’s 1275 engine was a thirsty little thing. I never got to see the undoubtedly less-well-detailed engine room. Peggy would not permit it.
Every week or so, we would return to the filling station for another topping off of both petrol and oil. Every week Peggy would “slam, slam, slam” the bonnet down. And every week she would exclaim “Oh bloody ‘ell”, and stomp her foot a couple of times. Rather comical, truth be told. The predictability of it all was part of the joke. Then she would re-enter the car with a glare, silently signaling “don’t even start with me, lads”. I would have been happy to adjust the latch, but I didn’t dare volunteer. It would have somehow either acknowledged the fault itself, or her inability to overcome it, and whichever of the two was the area of contention with her, it just seemed completely unacceptable to bring it up. As it was, Michael and I were always “eyes front” and stone faced, every time she got back into the car at the petrol station. We wanted to giggle at the whole thing, and at how it repeated, week after week, but it just would not have been at all appropriate.
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So much interior room in all directions, though Peggy’s MG was a two door. When she was done adding oil to the engine, her expression was always whatever the opposite is, of what this woman’s face looks like.
The car offered a good seating position, front and back, without the chin-to-knees arrangement of so many others. It was a bit wheezy in the power department, but otherwise nimble in traffic, in its smoky and rattling automotive old age. It did keep running, in the face of no obvious maintenance schedule, other than to give it lots of oil. No doubt any professional mechanic would have simply adjusted the bonnet latch without being asked, as all it would have taken was the release of the jam nut and a couple of turns of the latch post.
In fact, another teaching couple, expecting their first child, would carpool Michael and me, on the odd day when Peggy was unavailable. They had a new Ford Escort XR3i, which was a very attractive rendition of the ‘80s Ford squared-off styling language. Granted, it was a bit of a smaller car overall, but it was so small inside. The dashboard area was a sea of squared-off plastic, very au courant, and the front seats appeared very well shaped and comfortable. But things like head room and leg space under the dashboard appeared much more constricted. As to the back seat, where Michael and I dwelled, it was impossibly tiny. Twenty years of car evolution, and the interior dynamics had gone straight backwards, in the name of styling and fashion. The exterior of the little Ford was awesome, but the interior was really only suited for two. The coming little one would only fit back there for a few years, before the car would need to be traded in.
Peggy’s boyfriend (fiancé?) lived next door in the men’s dorm. The walls were rather thin. He and Peggy argued and fought like crazy people. It didn’t sound like anything but huge outpourings of pure vitriol. But who am I to say? Maybe it was a courtship of sorts, or it was just how they rolled. But it sure sounded like love/hate. As it is said that the opposite of love is not hate, but indifference, perhaps there is something to the love/hate thing for certain people. Passion and anger all rolled up into a ball. Just like the “slam, slam, oh bloody ‘ell” sessions at the filling station, I just ignored it all and said nothing.
That’s not to say she did not have her kind or sweet side. We occasionally worked together on “teaching stuff”. But she was one of the most intimidating people I ever met. Some people are the stars, in given situations, and others are merely stagehands. She may not remember me at all, or merely as a cipher, but my memories of her are indelible. She was definitely the star of her own odd little show.
The teaching experience taught me quite a lot. The school was strict, with uniforms, corporal punishment, and daily assemblies. I found that the school environment was great for some of the kids, and awful for others. It is a matter of matching the person to the environment, and one doesn’t always get to do that, or the system or the parents will push a certain child into a certain school, for various reasons. It is always the case that what works for some does not work for others, in almost everything. And there are people who are rigid and uncompromising, and one must work around the edges of such a person. People live in the world they make for themselves. All these tidbits I picked up during that term.
I found that I was not much of a teacher, and the kids always had me well outnumbered, and also outmatched in the battle of wills, even in a strict school environment. I wouldn’t trade the experience for the world, but I learned that teaching was definitely something that I was not good at doing.
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The MG 1300 again. What a marvelous car for the task it was given. And attractive in its own distinctive way.
One last Peggy story. I am walking through an interior hallway in a classroom building, and I hear the familiar “Oh bloody ‘ell”, from around the corner. Peggy has a serious run in her tights. She tells me there is no women’s restroom nearby, and she can’t walk around with a run in her tights. There is no one else around, and she gives me a flick of her chin, turn around. Got it, and I turn away. As she no doubt has her skirt hiked up to remove her tights, the classroom door I have turned to, and I am facing, unexpectedly opens up, and about a half dozen boys, younger ones, first years or second years, come bounding out. They all stop, simultaneously, in mid-step, and their jaws quickly drop, in dead silence and stillness. I hear a whispered “Oh bloody ‘ell” behind me. Eyes forward and stone-faced, I count to five and then turn around. I didn’t know a face could turn that red in embarrassment, especially her face. On the way back home in the MG that evening, Peggy was in tears. Her fierceness was absent. She was certain that her tenure at the school was over, and she would be asked to leave. She had no idea how infatuated the headmaster, who was my master teacher, was with her. She had nothing to worry about. All of the adults involved knew to face forward and say nothing. Everything would be alright.
I hope that Peggy, and also Michael, have led long and happy lives since then. I heard through the grapevine, a few years later, that Peggy had been offered a permanent teaching position at that school and had accepted it. The headmaster gave me a joyful grin when he shared that information with me.
What a great story, thank you.
The Matchbox MG 1100 does have a dog on the backseat looking out of the window and a driver all in the same off white plastic as the interior.
As a pupil I was only vaguely aware of what went on behind the staff room door and never having been in teaching I can only guess at how it feels to be ‘on the other side’, but we all like to live behind the comfort of our facades. Those moments when they fall make for good tales.
The BMC ADO16s were paragons of space efficiency though had an alarming propensity to rust. The lack of useable space in the Ford is revealing, despite the use of similar transverse FWD. The strobe striped seats are so very 1980s. Below an overhead view of the Escort and BMC 1300 to the same scale. Spot the Tardis.
My memory of the MG1100s and ADO16s I’ve seen is that they were tiny relative to Escorts. Sure enough, the MG1300 was more than a foot shorter in length than an Escort XR3, four inches narrower, and an inch and a half lower. I am surprised that they were that close in height.
I’ll be shocked if this is not the best and funniest thing I’ll read today.
“People live in the world they make for themselves.”
Great line, and it’s as true as anything. Your characterization of Peggy is one for the books! For some reason, she makes me think of Mary Kate Danaher from “The Quiet Man.”
Good call, raven haired instead of red, but, yup, in thinking about it.
Sigh….
On the American side of the pond, I had the most fortunate offer of this MG’s cousin, a 1968 Austin America – really a go-kart that seated four!
Aside from putting an American radio in a car with a “positive earth” electrical system, the car was a joy to drive – up to the point where the hydro elastic suspension failed – all of us crammed on the left side of the car limping home while the right side sagged, rubbing the tires in the wheel wells!
I reluctantly parted with my little friend at that time – could not find anyone who could effect a repair!
That limp home with all ‘ands to port paints a very amusing image.
I know I’ve posted this photo before, but this was my dad’s MG 1100, which he owned from 1964-74 (U.S. version):
Wasn’t there a “notchback” ((one with a trunk)) version? I remember spotting a yellow one in Pgh , near Pitt. Any time I got to that part a town (around 1970-72) I’d see it parked in the same general area.
I know of Riley and Wolseley variants with extended wheelbases, but still the same sloped rear end. There were brand variants (again, Riley and Wolseley) of the Mini that had odd-looking, relatively flat-topped, trunks (“boots”?) appended to the rear of the car.
Actually they were all on the same wheelbase and had the same body. It was just a few exterior changes that identified them.
There was a restyled, extended version of the ADO16 with a Michelotti designed front and rear that was built and sold in South Africa (Austin Apache) and Spain (Authi Victoria), but the chances of seeing one in the US would be beyond very small.
https://www.aronline.co.uk/cars/bmc/1100-1300/11001300-international-variations/austin-victoria/
Paul, you are right. I am crossing the ADO16, this car, with a successor, the ADO17, the infamous “Landcrab”. (Need to research more before commenting off the top of my head…).
Here’s a Riley Elf. A bit ironic that I got this photo, because my main agenda that day was to get photos of the owner’s Lancia Fulvia Berlina.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/12119356@N00/51967797310/in/pool-curbsideclassic/
This is the Austin Apache, from South Africa, and the only one I’ve seen in the UK.
Often described as Triumph-like, thanks to Michelotti
ADO16s arent quite really rare here yet and I see them still in use frequently I was at a friends place yesterday when one of her neighbours went past in his Austin 1300 GT, they also had the 1275 twin carb engine and having driven one years ago remember they got along quite well, Rust took lots of them out of service mechanical issues got a fair amount too survivors are usually well cared for and many are posted on FB for sale as barn finds.
The “How Many Left” site shows about 200 MG 1100/1300s on the British roads today, with about another 100 or so on their version of “non-op”.
I really enjoyed this chapter, very nicely told.
A thoroughly entertaining story, and I really enjoy the “people stories with cars in supporting role.”
One query, though: do English women (“birds”) now get “runs” in their tights (pantyhose)? When I was in London, Birmingham and York they got “ladders”.
I tried to use the language I heard, but she just pointed at the “run”, and didn’t name it, IIRC.
It is true that some people leave deep impressions on us when we are young. It was enjoyable to read about Peggy, clearly such a person.
The Matchbox thing rang true with me too – half the cars were seen every day in my midwestern US life and the other half were mysteries to me.
Great story. Why CC is always a daily read.
I assume that quart of oil at every fill-up was an Imperial quart.
You might enjoy the “Wilt” series of comic novels by Tom Sharpe. Henry Wilt, the protagonist, is what you were training to be. I imagine Peggy could ride herd on students better than you could.
…and the problem would have become your fault. Good job you kept your hands in your pockets about it.
Matchbox MG 1100
I love the ADO16 – IMHO this was the best of the Issigonis cars – Pininfarina did a great job of the exterior and apart from lacking a hatch (even though the A40 Farina offered one), it was the prototypical Golf. Best selling car in the UK for many years.
They are delightful to drive (especially the 1300GT) – more refined than a Mini, but just as sweet handling.
And snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, as they were wont to do, instead of developing on the strengths of the ADO16, British Leyland replaced it with the still hatch-less and horrible All aggro, I mean Allegro….
Interesting car, great story telling .
Anything_ made by BMC in those days rusted terribly, even in the Desert .
-Nate
Quite a story about Peggy. Sounds like you were a bit smitten with her, though a bit intimidated at the same time. Wonder where she is now, and what she looks like.
Wait a minute, this is about cars. Curbside Classic. Is there a car involved here? Of of course, the MG1100. I’ve got that part right at least, right?
But Peggy…
The ADO 16’s were a miracle of packaging for their time, and looked good as well. They were the perfect expression of the concept first shown with the Mini, and were market-superior to any of the larger ADO’s that came later.
The Hyundai Ioniq 5 strikes me as a somewhat recognizable descendant. Again, it’s sad that BMC/BL couldn’t successfully build on this great design.
How well-told. Great work, Mr 1960.
Very telling that the glorious Peggy was in tears and subdued on that drive home. From a modern perspective, it’s pure sexist rubbish that she had to feel that way, or that she felt that a run in her stockings was such a problem, or, indeed, that anything about her appearance had anything to do with getting the job later. Blimey, I cringe. No judgement, btw – you’re relaying the events of many years ago, and in fine style too. I have known someone exactly like her in my field, a tornado force of nature. (Sadly, she’s now literally in hiding, so a different ending, albeit of her own making).
The ADO 16 was made in Oz, and sold up a storm. But by my childhood and youth, the ’70’s into the ’80’s, they were bottom-range second-handers, a car bought only from financial necessity. They were not loved, as their top-seller status was completely betrayed by their hopeless frangibility. After them, everyone bought Japanese, and, cramped cardboard-seated dull-witted leaf-sprung RWD baroque-styled horrors that they were, they didn’t break.
The 1100’s were a delight to ride in by comparison, and as roomy as you describe, but most folk understandably put a premium on arriving as intended.
It was over 35 years ago, and we were all in our early 20s, and those two things made a difference. We were still figuring things out for ourselves.
You expand on something I hadn’t given too much thought to. Shame is a powerful force, and while one criticism of today’s times is that people act without shame, it could be used to hold people down as well. I can’t speak to today, but young women in the Thatcher-era UK, from my experience, were still expected to toe quite a few lines and “know their place”, much more so than in the U.S. (or at least Southern California). There was also much more open flirting there, from older, usually married men, with younger women. Even back then, it edged up to slightly creepy, at times, in my eyes. It was just how things were.
“Peggy”, for her part (and likely from capturing quite a bit of sometimes unwanted attention from a young age, given her looks), would throw it all right back and just roll with it. Constantly pushing back against boundaries that she recognized, but others didn’t quite respect, and doing so in a way that was not overtly critical or complaining, required a stubborn and spirited personality, which she had. And she did it with flying colors (colours?) and her head held high. Tons of respect for her, from where I stood.
I could have been a bit “smitten”, I suppose, but she was in such another league that I may as well have been in the bleacher seats. Also, I found the busy and voluable “give/take” of how she managed her relationships with people would be exhausting to me. I valued that I was able to spend commuting and working “down time” with her so that I could better understand who she was and where she was coming from. It is important to remember that people are so much more than their “public faces”. Sort of like (because this is a “car” site, after all) commuting in an MG 1300 teaches one a lot about the virtues of the car that one doesn’t get from looking at it at the car show.
I have a story analogous to Peggy’s sitch with the bonnet latch. When I was middle school age, I had a piece of furniture in my bedroom that had two clamshell doors, hinged at opposite sides of the cabinet. When closed they butted up against each other. There was a half-round molding on one of them, which overlapped the other door when the doors were closed.
Every day I’d close the one door all the way and then try to close the door with the molding. Trouble was, the whole affair had a thick layer of paint on it, and the door didn’t want to close, so it was slam, slam, slam. My lack of frustration tolerance didn’t help matters. I would have said “bloody hell” or some such, but my parents would have gotten mad.
Finally someone suggested that I close the two doors almost all the way with the molding overlapping the other door, then close them all the way. Worked like a charm.