Every Car Has a Story

Since I have a dozen MGAs, I have a few and this is one. The day didn’t start out very good. Earlier in the week I noticed an ad in MGA! for a set of seat frames. I called the person who placed the ad and we worked out a price. The deal was that I would drive to Cleveland on Sunday morning to a British car show and we would meet and complete the sale. When I found his truck I did not see the seat frames and I asked where they were. His answer was that he had decided that he wanted more money than we had negotiated and he would go home and get them if I would pay the new price. Well I can’t write here what I told that guy.

When I got home six hours later and short twenty gallons of gas and twenty dollars in tolls without the seat frames I was not in too good of a mood. I was out in the garage stewing when my wife came out and said that I should take this phone call. On the phone was the sweetest old lady named Jerry Bronsky who had gotten my phone number on the internet from the Greater Pittsburgh MG Club website. We had a long conversation about her and her husband who had passed away and their honeymoon car that was in the back yard. She explained to me that when they had the twins they could no longer drive the car because it was not big enough. I asked her what kind of MG it was and she did not know but she thought it was a 1958. I then asked her how long it had been sitting outside and she was not sure so I asked her how old the twins were. Well the twins were forty seven.

Was it even worth going to look at an MG that had been sitting outside for forty seven years? It was a nice day and I did not have anything planned so Bonnie and I took a ride to the other side of Pittsburgh to see the honeymoon car. Well it was a 1958 MGA but it was taken apart and who knew where the parts were. The car had been sitting so long that the legs had rusted off of the jack stands that were holding it up. When I got under it to check the frame it almost fell on me. I asked her if she knew where all the parts were and she said that her Joe never threw anything away and they were probably in the garage. When we opened up the garage door the garage was stacked from floor to ceiling about twenty feet deep with all kinds of stuff. It looked to me like it would take a day to clean out the garage looking for the parts. Yes the car was covered, but It was rusted in a lot of strange places where the cover had a hole in it.

I do not need another rust bucket but I hate to see the car just sitting here and rusting away so I made her an offer. In my opinion the car was beyond fixing. She told me she would let me know in a few days. She called and said that her brother was going to take the car and fix it up. That was ok and I offered help if needed.

About a year later I got a call and she said if I still wanted the car it was available. Again I need another rust bucket like I need a hole in my head but it did have some good parts. When I went to pick up the car a friend of mine, Bill Ballard, went with me to help and he thought he could fix the car and put it back together. It was too much for me so the car went to his garage for reconstruction. When we went to pick the car up she made us promise that if we redid the car we had to come over and take her for a ride. As you can see by the pictures the car is coming along quite well. Jerry was thrilled when I called her and told her that this spring she would be able to go for a ride.

An assortment of photos of the car before and after restoration are posted below. Many thanks to George Kress and Bill Ballard for the article and photos.