Hemmings Sports & Exotic Car Article
Springtime in Reno, or how we had a great trip to GT-36 and landed up in Hemmings Sport & Exotic Car Magazine by Jean and Gerald Wrohan.
In June we, like many others from all over the continent, jumped in our MG and headed toward Reno, Nevada to join in on the All MG Get Together. The three day trip from Vancouver Island to Reno was enjoyable, as usual, meeting up with MG friends along the way and arriving ready for a week of all things MG. We did seminars, scenic drives, picnics, socialising and all the other fun stuff associated with a GT. The day before the end was show day, followed by the wind-up banquet. We polished our 1957 MGA to be ready for the Show and Shine along with 612 of our closest friends and headed to the fair grounds. We spent the morning drooling over myriads of gorgeous MGs of all vintages and then decided to pick up our lunch at the canteen set up by the organisers.
When we returned, lunch in hand to the car, I noticed a business card placed in the spokes of the steering wheel. It was from Jeffrey Koch, asking for us to call him because he was interested in writing an article about our car for Hemmings Sports & Exotic Car Magazine. A cell phone call later and we were talking to Jeffrey in person about our MG’s journey from scrap to the car we were standing beside.
During the rebuild, the majority of which I did myself, I had taken many pictures, all of which were in an album that I carry in the car whenever we go to a show. We had the perfect formula for a feature article. I told Jeffrey that I would be able to supply a set of pictures from the rebuild to their editorial department and that I would be happy to work with one of their writers to flesh out the story.
Jeffrey told us that we, along with two other MG owners, should meet him that evening in the park so that he could take some official pictures for the magazine. This meant that we would have to miss the first part of the Banquet, but thus is the price of fame!
That evening, when the light was just right we ‘staged’ the cars for Jeffrey, the professional photographer, to do his thing. It was interesting to watch a pro get the perfect angle and reflections for pictures worth publishing. He even made me look pretty good! All that and we even made it in time for dinner!
When we got home I had to dig through the cases of negatives (yes, in the days of the ancients we had a thing called 35mm) and thanks to my impeccable chronological filling system (new stuff on the top and old stuff on the bottom) I managed to find all of them. Jeffrey asked me to have them reprinted for the editorial boys in Vermont because, as he put it, things have a habit of getting lost post editing. He also said that they preferred prints to scanned reproductions, for quality reasons.
I wrote a quick historical piece about my ‘education’ in car restoration and how I managed to find the MG and the process I went through to complete the job. I packaged everything up and sent it to Jeffrey, who forwarded to head office.
A few weeks later I got an e-mail from James Donnelly, the Hemmings writer who had been assigned the job of composing the restoration article, setting up a time for a phone interview. Our chat lasted about half an hour, in which time I answered most of the questions he had, based on the preliminary information I had sent him. A few more questions by e-mail and he had what he needed for the article. He e-mailed me a draft of the unedited copy, which I approved, and he sent it off to his editors for ‘fleshing’ out and publication. The final article is featured in the November 2011 issue of Hemmings Sport & Exotic Car magazine. Because the magazine is virtually unobtainable where I live in Canada I called their circulation department who sold me some copies (for bragging rights) at a discounted price. They also publish the feature articles from the magazine on their website after the magazine is off the stands.
