The Bumble-B
". . . . and the way she looked was way beyond compare.
I’d never dance with another when I saw her standing there . . . ."
The Beatles got it exactly right, and twenty-some years after their song, so did I! At nine years and 59,000 miles old the Bumble B became my owner in March 1987, and together we’ve clocked up a mere 300,000+ miles of blissful motoring on top of that.
Some might say that since K&I re-shelled her in 2000 that she’s not the same car, but look at the little pic of Bumble B (1) below, and you’ll see that Bumble B (2) in the main picture has still got what it takes – and then some! Oh, and of course in ’93, at 160,000 miles, her engine was rebuilt to give her (and me) the chance to do it all again!
The MGB, although no space-rocket, was (and still is) Britain’s most popular sports car. Completely without benefit of hi-tech computery technology and wizardry, she totally epitomised the age in which she was born, as well as all of the decades in which she was in production. So it should come as no surprise that even today there are more MGBs around than some of the whizzy-whizzy-awfully-busy “sports” cars currently in production. And, as we all know, lo-tech equals DIY equals easy-to-afford, and hi-volume production equals readily available lo-cost parts equals less “down-time” in the modern parlance! So stick the key in the lock, give it a twist, and burble off down those leafy country lanes.
Len Wadge