About Me

I’ve always liked classic cars. I bought an MG Midget 1500 when I was about 25 and although I joined the owners club and did a few club days out at Athelhampton house, it always felt like I had compromised on my choice of car due to budget. Fast forward a few years and I’ve had a number of hobbies, but none of them have scratched my itch (except boats, which destroyed my bank balance!). So I decided to look at buying another classic car. I don’t have the budget for a big Healey, one of my favourite cars but I did have a number of criteria that I wanted to have in a new car to avoid feeling that “compromise”:

It had to be a two seater convertible
It had to be on black number plates
Ideally, It had to have knock off wire wheels

Considering my budget, this knocked 90% of cars out of the mix. I’m no mechanic, and any paint, bodywork or engine work would need to be carried out by a professional. I’m under no illusions that any professional restoration is rarely paid back for in the price of the car so I wanted something that was in very good overall condition, but one that I could do work on to improve.

So I searched the internet and tried to come up with a shortlist. An impromptu visit to Highcliff Castle Classic Car Show narrowed the choice down to just a few cars:

MGA Roadster
MGB Roadster MK1 (Pull handle model)
MGC Roadster
Triumph TR3 or TR3A
Triumph TR4

Some of these cars are very expensive, certainly since last time I looked. Only 9,000 MGC’s were manufactured so finding one of these would be difficult, but I wasn’t overly excited by owning an MGB Roadster unless it was really good value. The straight six and restyled bonnet made the MGC more attractive, but in all honesty, I really fancied an MGA although I thought this would be out of my price range.

I found there was an auction to be held by Richard Edmonds Auction House at Castle Coombe racing circuit on the 31st May, 2014. There were a few cars in this auction that caught my eye so at the last minute, I decided to go there with the family to have a look around.

And that was the beginning of my ownership of JSK 404. The images shown below are those taken from online auction sites advertising the car at Richard Edmonds auction, before I purchased the car.