~ And then, this house is cheap. Relatively speaking, anyway. Houses with
~ big garages cost many kilobucks more, so I wouldn't be able to afford
~ anything to go in the garage. If I can live with the tacky old carpet for
~ a while, I might have enough in a few months to follow Scott's excellent
~ advice and buy a $5000 MGB or Alpine someone else has created by doing
~ $6000 worth of work to a $1500 MGB or Alpine.
I'm concocting another of my Wild Theories about compatibilities of
cars. I'll preface this by mentioning that Kim, the gardener of the
family, has been researching companion planting as part of her ongoing
search for good excuses to get completely filthy and sit in a pile of
burrs and splinters while wearing my clothes "for comfort." There are few
surprises nastier than discovering that the seat of a pair of sweatpants
is now host to a dozen or so cockleburrs or those razor-sharp helical
seed-pod things. But I digress.
Kim has observed, both through reading and through primary research
in the field, that certain plant combinations are beneficial, and
certain other combinations are detrimental to the plants so combined.
For instance, pea plants are chemically indisposed to be planted too
near garlic; we've observed this in our own garden, where we accidentally
planted a row of peas with garlic at one end and lettuce at the other.
The peas near the lettuce are sweet and crisp, with vigorous green leaves;
the peas near the garlic are yellow, wan, flaccid and tasteless. (The
classic book on this topic, BTW, is "Carrots Love Tomatoes" by Louise
Riotte, who has written several charming books on gardening folklore.)
I have long suspected that cars have similar beneficial and detrimental
pairings. For instance, M.G. sports cars and water-cooled VW products are
quite compatible; I've had M.G.s and GTIs without too much detriment
to either (if you discount spinning the GTI by trying to take a corner
at the same speed I could in the M.G., that is :-). However, it is
apparent from the problems that Berry was having with Sybil that TR6s
may not have such an affinity for Fahrvergnuegen; we'll have to keep
an eye on that.
Since you have a Frogeye, you may wish to be careful in your choice of
second vehicles. Frogeyes and later Midgets fight for the same niche;
my Midget was totalled (while parked on my quiet residential street)
less than a month after I bought my Bugeye project car.
I have noticed that LBCs and BACs (Big American Cars) don't always get
along well, though in my own experience it's been the BAC that suffered
the worst. Our '65 Chevelle was stolen when I had one MGB; it was
recovered and repainted after I sold that M.G., but then a tree fell on
it a short time after I got another B. On the other hand, my '63-1/2
Falcon Sprint seemed to be quite compatible with the MGB, but the Pontiac
Catalina wagon I used as a tow vehicle was wildly incompatible. Perhaps
it's just GM products and M.G.s -- well, obviously, their initials
are polarized.
I am also coming to the conclusion that M.G.s and Volvos may not be
compatible, as I have lost two M.G. motors since buying my 122S. I
have not yet had enough up-time to determine the effect of Datsuns
on M.G.s; the B seems to have no detrimental effect on the 280ZX,
except when their road manners are compared, of course.
MGBs and Triumphs, of course, are problematic; consider the trouble that
TeriAnn has been having. I have pointed this out to her in the past,
and I am convinced that this is the primary reason that she has had
so much trouble with getting her MGB-GT to pass smog. Of course, she
is so far into both the GT and the TR3 that there's no turning back,
and I can only hope that this lesson will let you, Ray, make a cautious
decision in your initial selection rather than choosing something you
will live to regret.
On the other hand, the stories above *do* sound a lot like the cautionary
tales you hear in a chain letter...
--Scott "Send ten copies to your friends, in six weeks you get a Jag" Fisher
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