Go ahead and criticize me now: I didn’t buy the MG TC.
There is no good excuse, since I knew about the car since the mid-’60s, when I was 12 years old or so, when I would ride my bicycle in Lake Grove, Long Island, past the green MG. In the driveway was a man perpetually tinkering with it. I stopped and looked at the MG for a moment but was too young to pursue its purchase, so I got back on my bike and kept riding.
For years, as I passed the house while I lived on Long Island, I thought of that TC, a car that I had developed a passion for but unfortunately was never in a position to consider owning. Decades passed, and I moved to North Carolina to become involved in professional motorsports.
Years later, probably in the early 1990s, while my wife, Pat, our newborn son, Brian, and I were visiting my in-laws on Long Island, I got a little bit stir-crazy. I loaded Brian into his baby car seat and we went for a drive.
As I passed the Lake Grove home, I wondered, “Might that MG still be sitting in the garage?” I pulled over and peered into the garage door windows.
There it was!
As a car-crazy kid on a bicycle, I remember seeing this MG TC in a garage back in the mid-1960s. Thirty years later, when I peeked in the same garage door, it was still there! TOM COTTER
Nearly 30 years after first seeing the car in the driveway, the car was still owned by the family. I carried Brian up to the house and rang the doorbell. A woman answered. Her name was Nancy Sullivan. And the story she told me was incredible.
Owner Nancy Sullivan of New York purchased the car in the 1950s and drove it on her honeymoon and on a number of trips to Watkins Glen for the U.S. Grand Prix. It had a few slight modifications, including cycle front fenders that steer with the front wheels. TOM COTTER
Nancy Moore purchased the slightly modified MG in 1957. Soon thereafter, she met another car enthusiast, Dennis Sullivan, who collected Model T Fords. Two years later, they were married, drove the MG to Cape Cod for their honeymoon, and then drove it up to the Canadian border.
Back on Long Island, the couple became caught up in the thriving sports car movement. They drove the little green car to races at Bridgehampton, Lime Rock, and Watkins Glen. When children started to arrive, the MG remained the family’s favorite mode of transport. Dennis fabricated two baby seats in the package area behind the seat and regularly commuted to upstate New York to visit relatives.
In 1966, probably soon after I saw the car as a 12-year-old, the Sullivans sold the MG to a local enthusiast. Dennis died in 1975, and Nancy had an urge to regain the happy times she and Dennis shared. So when she saw her old MG for sale a few months afterward, she bought it back. The car sat for years in her garage, and she toyed with selling it.
She and I spoke about it that day in the early 1990s, but we couldn’t decide on a price that was satisfactory for both of us. So I never pursued it.
But Tony Giordano, who read The Cobra in the Barn, asked if I minded if he pursued the purchase of the car.
“Go ahead, Tony,” I said. “Have fun.”
Well, he bought it, and he’s having fun. Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.