JULY/AUGUST 2015, VOL 40/NO 6

Summer is upon us and I hope everyone is driving their MGAs for summer fun in the sun. I couldn’t help the rhyme…sorry. By the time you read this, GT-40 in Frankenmuth, MI will be a thing of the past and hopefully everyone will have had a great time.

I am supposed to speak at the banquet dinner and help with the awards for some of the great looking cars that win trophies and plaques for distance mileage. My wife tells me my mouth is like the Mississippi River in that it runs and runs, which I will try not to do when I am in front of all the attendees. My next article will have more information on our GT-40.

How many of you look at our website, NAMGAR.com? It is continually being updated with new events and information for the NAMGAR community. When you get to our site, click on “events” and you will be able to see most of the MG or British car shows that are coming up in the months ahead.

We have many chapters around the country and I would like to give you a few ideas for the future. I have owned my car since 1971 when I was seventeen and wanted to learn about cars. I am now in my 60s and am thinking about the next generation of MGA enthusiasts. Who will own our cars next if it is not a family member? This happens to be my “thing,” as I have enjoyed all the experiences that have come from owning my car and I have two daughters. One is not interested and the other might be interested in keeping up the MG, but maybe not. I have given her a car to use, and if she is going to keep up the MG the same way she keeps her current car, it will not go to her.

I want the car to be driven and enjoyed by someone who will maintain the marque. We need to find new blood for our clubs; and this new blood needs to be YOUNG blood to carry our cars into the future.

I was about fifteen when I rode in an MGA with another driver at the wheel. He was with the local MG club and that year we hosted a foreign exchange student. The group was the American Field Service or AFS. Every year the MG club would pick up the host student, which was me, and the exchange student to introduce them to the area with a tour in an MG. It was cool then, and it has to be way cool now.

There are many different situations in which clubs can get young people involved and introduce them to our cars. We need to spark an interest in the younger generation to someday want to own a car like ours or better yet, restore one. This could also be an annual event that your local club sponsors. A few years ago my daughter went to an MG event to learn how to drive a stick shift. They used an empty parking lot and the club had about ten cars with the owner riding shot-gun and the student sitting in the driver’s seat. This was a great way to show the students that driving a stick shift is not that hard and can actually be fun.

I will be looking forward to hearing from you about what your clubs are doing to introduce a new generation to our cars so I can pass the information along in my newsletter. Take a look at the average age of your club members. You’ll see that we need to do something now to share our passion for our cars so we’ll have a new generation of MG NUTS. After all, I think it’s kind of like a bag of Doritos chips, you can’t have just one (MG).