Chapter Two: How the Story Began
Since the hastily completed restoration of Dillon Everette’s 1953 MG, 34 years ago, the car had developed a patina that alluded to a vehicle that had aged its full 77 years with little modification and only moderate care. The green lacquer had crackled on the left front fender as well as on the right rear one. There were further signs of cracks along its cowl and around the filler tube where gas had dripped since Dillon’s repainting of the car in 1995. The front fender and grill bezel were both dented when Dillon first saw the MG in a garage in Doylestown, Pennsylvania.
The car had most of its original parts and had been painted white at one point. The interior and dashboard were stained or painted black, and there was no carpet worth saving. The chrome door handles were pitted, and the car came with a box of spare parts and a new bumper that had never been installed after its purchase. The engine started up and ran when cranked by the starter motor and it seemed to have brakes that held. Otherwise, the car would be a dismal, if hopeful, purchase by a 47-year-old man who had lusted for a roadster of its type since the age of 16, but who had never previously had the financial wherewithall to acquire such a car.
Dillon found what he was looking for in the classified section of the Philadelphia Inquirer as he scanned through the paper while eating breakfast at the Lima Diner, part of his routine on Saturday mornings after his karate lesson. The ad simply stated:
1953 MG TD FOR SALE
Runs, but needs work. 98% complete, with
extra parts. Price negotiable.
Call Frank. 215-776-3196
Dillon phoned the number from his office, which was just around the corner from the diner, and left a message, providing his home number.
Since the following day was Mother’s Day, Dillon drove to a local mall to find a gift for his wife before returning home.
It was later that same afternoon when Dillon got a call from Frank, the owner of the car, who asked when he’d be available to take a look at the MG, which was stored in his garage.
Dillon conferred with Doris, and she seemed to have no problem with him purchasing the car for a reasonable price, but she reminded him that they had neither a place to store it nor one for him to “fiddle” with a car on their own property.
The nextdoor neighbors, Ester and Mike Brandt, however, had a barn located just inside their property line that they used to store their firm’s accounting records.
“Do you think they would rent me space?” asked Dillon.
“All we can do is ask,” responded Doris. “If you’d like, I’ll propose the idea to Mike or Ester and see if they’re receptive. They do think you are a bit crazy, Dillon. Particularly Ester.”
Later that Saturday, Doris phoned the Brandts and explained to Ester her husband’s problem, and let her know that he would only be using a small portion of the space for storage, disassembly and reassembly, and offered a rental fee of $100 per month.
Ester passed the phone to Mike, and Doris passed her phone over to her husband. The two men negotiated a rental fee based on a gentlemen’s contract if, in fact, Dillon chose to purchase the car.
Dillon then phoned Frank and asked to see the car the next day.
Dillon arrived at the given location at 11:30 a.m. and was greeted by Frank’s wife, who let him inside.
“I purchased the car eight years ago,” said Frank. “The previous owner had started the renovation with an engine rebuild, but never completed the car. I thought I’d have time to finish it, but got interested in Volkswagons instead, and now I haven’t got the room for one extra car, let alone two.”
Frank started the car up and drove it out of the garage. It looked pretty beaten up, but it ran, and it didn’t seem to be missing any parts except for the canvas top, but the roof supports were still intact.
The two men agreed on a price of $6,000, which Dillon believed was too high for its condition, but he wanted the car and intended to rebuild it, not drive it in its current condition.
The MG was delivered to the Everette household on a trailer a week later. It was the first time Doris and their three children had seen the small car, which looked to be quite a wreck, and a project that Dillon would never in their minds’ eyes complete.
To find temporary space for the car, he removed the front and rear bumpers to make it fit inside the small shop he had previously built for woodworking, and that’s where it remained until space was made in his neighbor’s barn to provide room for the vehicle.
Although Doris and the family didn’t know it at the time, Dillon had a plan to get the car back on the road by early fall, and take his wife on a trip to Evermay, a bed and breakfast located along the Delaware River, near New Hope, Pennsylvania.
Doris truly believed that her husband would enjoy playing with the car on weekends, although she never expected him to complete the project.
Dillon and Doris both had their own businesses. Doris had developed a bustling graphic design shop which she ran from the family home, while Dillon was an architect who specialized in small additions and the renovation and re-purposing of existing spaces. Doris employed two, and Dillon three.
Dillon usually left for work by 7:00 a.m. and was home by 6:00 each weekday night, which left him little time for the restoration of the car. But he was very efficient, and began to leave work earlier in the day to begin the disassembly and repair of existing pieces of the roadster. With the help of the kids, who mowed the lawn and did some of his yard work, Dillon took extra days off from work that summer and managed to disassemble the car in the neighbor’s barn, repair and prime the body parts in his workroom, and transport other metal parts that required new chrome and repair to a shop specializing in plating located in the Pottstown area. He used spare moments that summer to order new upholstery, trim, side curtains and a top for installation after the car was to be repainted its original color: Woodland Green.
Dillon decided to keep the car operable as long as possible so that he could drive it from the barn to his yard to work on it on clear days, and then drive it back into the barn at night. The hood, fenders, headlights, grill and other body panels and exterior equipment were taken off and stored in the barn after removal and then primed and stored inside the work room until ready for topcoating. Dillon patiently removed the windshield, running boards, head lamps and grill until all that was left of the car was the chassis, an interior bucket, and gas tank that would enable him to start the car and drive it from the barn to a place on the lawn near his workroom.
As a teenager, Dillon had sprayed his ‘52 Plymouth with Fathom Blue lacquer, and knew that this coating was forgiving and easier to work with than enamel. It could be made to shine by sanding and rubbing down coats with fine sandpaper and rubbing compound. Lacquer dried fast, so several coats could be built up prior to finishing. Acrylic lacquer was soft and resilient and required only a simple vacuum compressor and a spray gun to coat the parts. He therefore could paint several coats at one time and let them dry enough to turn them over and spray the other sides and then return the coated parts to the barn for safekeeping.
When the major body parts were completely coated, all he needed to do to complete the paint job was to spray the bucket and the gas tank. He was left in a quandary as to where and how to paint the body outdoors before it rained, while retaining enough parts to drive the car back into the barn each night. The only possible way to paint it was to wait for a stretch of days when no rainfall was predicted.
It was midsummer at this point, and the sun still rose early in the east, so on the first day of a possible stretch of four dry days, Dillon headed out to the barn at 5:15 a.m. and drove the car to the outside of his workroom. He disassembled the gas tank from the chassis and masked off the engine and chassis areas, removed the battery and tools from the bin on the firewall, and waited for the sun to rise, at which time he primed the bucket, the gas tank and the other components, before heading to his office.
Dillon then left his office at 3:30 that day and returned home to wet sand the remainder of the primed pieces and finished by nightfall. The next morning he again woke early and sprayed several coats of Woodland Green lacquer on three sides of the gas tank, doors and the grill while waiting for dawn to fully break so he could see well enough to spray the body with several coats of the green lacquer. The fenders, hood and running boards could be done at a later time inside the workroom, but the bucket needed to be fully coated. The back of the bucket required sanding and rubbing out, as did the rear of the gas tank, before the parts could be reassembled. After three days the engine could be started after the battery was temporarily reinstalled to return the rolling chassis to the safety of the barn for final finishing and polishing.
As July turned to August, Dillon was well aware of the tightness of the timetable required to get the vehicle back on the road. The pleated leather seat covers arrived along with the door coverings, beadings and carpeting, and in between sessions he rubbed out the doors and polished the paint in the engine compartment.
Dillon then removed the dashboard and ordered a new wiring harness. One evening, when Doris was preparing for bed, she came into the bedroom and found the wiring harness strung out across the coverlet and draped over a blanket chest. Her husband, backed by a pillow, was sitting up and focused on a diagram of the electrical system found in the MG’s instruction manual.
The next day Dillon took the dashboard, harness and manual into work and laid them on a large work table in the basement and began to restore the metal panel that held the gauges, after which he installed the piping and the vinyl dash covering.
By September, the car was nearly complete, but the Pottstown firm responsible for the refinishing of the chrome hadn’t yet completed the job.
Every day Dillon called the shop, and each day they told him it would be done in a few days. He couldn’t complete the assembly of the front end of the car, since it required the newly chromed radiator cover and headlights to be in place. He became so anxious at work that one of his employees played a trick on him and told him that the company called and said that the chrome wouldn’t be finished until November. His secretary then laughed, as did the employee who had faked the call, only afterwards letting him know that the chrome was, indeed, completed.
Dillon had become so impatient to get the car on the road that one morning in August he drove it to work despite it being only partially assembled. He figured that he could drive the back roads and not be stopped by police, so he took the chance and made it home at the end of the day without incident.
A few weeks prior, he had made a reservation for an October stay at Evermay. Fortunately, he was able to pick up the chrome parts from the plater the last week in September, and so Dillon hurriedly completed the assembly of the car and its interior just in time for their weekend getaway. At the last minute he installed the luggage rack he’d ordered in July to hold their bags, as he’d earlier envisioned driving with the top down, fulfilling his promise to himself and Doris of a weekend away amidst the falling leaves, lovely views and the cool, fresh air of autumn.
The weekend turned out much as he’d planned, except for a few short rain showers which they were able to endure by putting the top up. But, as with many of Dillon’s projects, he often neglected the engineering to concentrate on the cosmetics. It was only later, in the spring of 1996, when he realized that the steering mechanism on the passenger side was missing a bushing and that the bolt holding it in place was wearing through the passenger side A-arm of the suspension system. Although he fixed the problem before spiriting off to an MG convention with Doris in Plymouth, Massachusetts, the next summer a team at the event recorded more than twenty problems caught by their inspectors, including a worn brake line, faulty door latches and wiring problems that required fixes for the green roadster from Pennsylvania. Fortunately, skilled drivers and mechanics were on site to help Dillon fix the majority of the problems they might have experienced if not for their assistance.
The long weekend ended with Dillon and Doris racing home along the Rhode Island Expressway during a downpour, unable to see behind their car due to the luggage strapped to the rack, and Doris reaching her head outside the windowless opening to use hand signals and relay messages to Dillon, who held the wheel tightly as he navigated the route nervously while huge sprays of water from trucks and other large vehicles engulfed their small interior.
Memories of the trip were positive for Dillon, who saw it as an adventure and who constantly reminded Doris of the wonderful drive they had had to dinner at a restaurant along the Massachusetts coastline.
Even though the car was wearing down the pushrods, which caused the valves to tap, Dillon never doubted the car’s ability to make yet another 700-mile journey to and from the The Greenbrier, an 11,000-acre luxury resort located at the southern tip of West Virginia. He and Doris planned to take the Washington Beltway and have dinner and spend the night at The Inn at Little Washington in Virginia, before continuing over the Blue Ridge Mountains, where they would meet Doris’s parents for a three-day stay at their destination resort. How bad could it be? Dillon thought…and how beautiful and what fun?
The trip was scheduled for October and the car had no heater except the engine that was overheating due to a clog in the oil supply system that would only be discovered two years later by Dillon’s father-in-law, who noticed that no oil was getting to the head.
Oh, well, thought Dillon. Thank God that was fixed. Now where can we go next in the little green car?
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