Tom and Pat Morgan's 1979 Spitfire

I used to justify my old car madness to my wife Pat by telling her these great machines would bring in untold wealth upon selling them. Well, a lot of years and 9 old cars later she’s wise to me. Now I have to justify purchases by comparing it to what other guys spend on golf and stuff. But my ’79 pageant blue Spitfire is the exception. First of all, it wasn’t an old car when I bought it in 1980 (8,000miles), so it doesn’t "count" in my collector car inventory. It’s just a car that I never traded in for another one. And secondly, if you compare it to most cars that old it would have been crushed by now and worth nothing. So I’m money ahead already. And it really will pay back the big money once old car guys figure out how unique these cars are. I mean the whole front end opens up like a racecar, how cool is that? When I was a teenage car nut I used to peddle over to the local LBC dealer in Lombard just to sit in these things. The name "Spitfire" oozed coolness. Today they call cars stuff like Eclipse (huh?) or Passat (pissonit?).

As you know, in the 60’s the idea of owning a "foreign car" meant you lived life on the edge. These cars hated winter. The ones that survived were mostly the ones that were put away in winter. But when I got Pageant Blue it was a daily driver for me. To get home from work in the winter I kept a hammer in the "cockpit" (the trunk was frozen shut). I’d give the starter a whack so the gear would unfreeze, start her up, then slap the fenders with my hand and those neat little sidelights would spring to life. And driving it in the snow, wow. I can hardly remember it, but I know you had to scrape the windshield inside and out, while driving. But after 4 years of salt she was looking like a one-week-old Datsun, so I tucked her into the garage at 40,000 miles with the intention to restore it.

Other old cars came and went while I slowly did an amateur restoration on it over the next 3 or 4 years (nothing like Joe and the ISOA gang do these days). Did you ever notice these cars rust even in the garage, in storage, on a carpet, with heat? They’re like painting the Golden Gate bridge; by the time you get from one end to the other it’s time to start over. When it was all done I joined ISOA (hello?). Now it’s only got 44,000 miles (no I don’t drive it backwards) and it’s on my list for another makeover. That fiberglass body filler isn’t too bad long as you stay out of the rain. But after all, these cars were never designed to still be around, and that’s what its all about, right? Annnnd even if I did drive it more it still cost less to operate than my TR6 or my ’64 Sting Ray (impulse buy). In fact I bet if I turn over all my receipts to the "Factor" he would come up with the fact that this car not only costs nothing to operate but is appreciating far better than my 401K. And that would give me ammo to use on Pat to justify adding another car to my inventory. Let’s do it.

By Tom Morgan