Junkyard Find: 1979 MG Midget
BMC and then British Leyland churned out MG Midgets and near-identical Austin-Healey Sprites for 20 years, with the final example coming off the Abingdon line in 1980. Because project-grade Midgets still clutter garages, driveways, yards, and fields throughout the land and they’re not worth much, the clock runs out for many of them every year.
The next stop, usually, is among the Sephias and Jettas of the IMPORTS section at a self-service wrecking yard. Here’s a forlorn ’79 I spotted last week in California.
Contrary to the belief of those living in Michigan or Massachusetts, cars do rust in California. Oh, yes they do! The worst corrosion horror-shows in the Golden State will be cars that park within a block or two of the ocean, where salt spray mixes with morning fog, but cars that sit outdoors for years will have their paint scorched away by the sun and their weatherstripping turned into black crumbly powder by the smog. Then the winter rains come and water collects under trim, carpeting, and vinyl tops. If a certain doomed British corporation saved a few pence on materials due to labour strife and the imminent collapse of society, you might see this process take place even faster than usual.
Worth restoring? No way. But owners of surviving Spridgets — of which there are many near this San Francisco Bay Area junkyard — will find plenty of useful parts on this car.
For 1979, the U.S.-market Midget had big plastic bumpers, jacked-up ride height (to meet Uncle Sam’s headlight regulations), and the single-carb 1,493cc engines out of the Triumph Spitfire. Fifty horsepower, which was sufficient to make this tiny 1,826-pound car feel a lot quicker than it really was. Meanwhile, the ’79 Honda Civic two-door weighed 151 pounds less and had 13 more horsepower. Sometimes life isn’t fair.
Beneath all the junkyard clutter, the interior looks to have been spared the worst ravages of the weather, probably because the car’s top stayed up during the wilderness years.
It’s got four wheels and reflexes so quick it almost seems alive.
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Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.
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Off to China to become a refrigerator for a dorm room, a cooking pot, a lawn mower, auto parts, and a couple of other Chinese made products.
Given how quickly those little things rusted, Midgets had about a 36 month shelf life in Ohio before they turn into dust like vampires in the sun.