Hello Roger

Thursday night while browsing Craig's List, I came across an interesting ad: For Sale: 1967 Morris Minor, yada yada yada.



(To get a good idea how big this car is notice the Volkswagen Beetle in the adjacent spot.)

Thirty-six hours later it was parked in my driveway. When I saw the ad, I knew it would go quickly. I called the owner. He said two others had already made arrangements to come see the car. I made my appointment for earlier in the day!

This car is roughly the same size as a VW Beetle. The interior is spacious but sparse. The exterior styling is reminiscent of cars 20 years older that it. It has a very small engine (1 liter) and a fairly large trunk boot. The paint looks good in the pictures and from about 20' - closer than that you can tell it needs some attention.

It quit once on the trip home. The previous owner said the gas tank was full. The gauge showed the tank was full. Fewer than 15 miles later I was out of gas. The gauge still showed the tank was full - it was not. In what seemed like a fortuitous event, the car ran out of gas right in front of a gas station. Unfortunately it was an unattended commercial refueling station. None of my cards worked there. My neighbor Brian who was still following me at this point, went and bought a gas can and brought me back some gas. At this point I headed straight for the station and filled up the tank and the empty gas can, just in case.

Did I say it quit once? It also developed a vacuum leak on the way home. This is kind of the opposite of quitting. The leak caused the engine to idle high. Nothing that couldn't be dealt with if I ever made it back home. Because it was idling high, I turned the motor off each time I had to stop for a light. (This reminded me of my hyper-mile-ing experiments the summer of 2008.)

Each time I stopped, there were one or more people there to ask me about the car. Two British car guys stopped to chat, they both wished me luck which I understand one needs when they have a car from the UK. Lots of people waving also. I think this car was getting more attention than the 1925 Chevy truck did. Amazing.

It has a few problems, but nothing we can't live without. I hope to get it running a little smoother soon. It won't be too soon though, my calendar is booked pretty solid for the next couple weeks.

Several folks have asked me what I am going to do with this car. The short answer is nothing. I don't plan on restoring it - basically I just want to keep it running and go get a milk shake from time to time.

Oh, yeah, we have decided to call it Roger, a name that stuck very quickly.