MG Car Club and New Car

This is my first post since the onset of winter and, unsurprisingly, I have not been out on walkabouts. I have run out both Bridget the Midget and Bernie the B for single day exercises, but that is as far as it has gone. I have decided that Bridget and I will go off for a couple of months at least in the summer, but have not yet decided where.

So, what have I been up too during the ‘winter blues’. There has really only been two marked events outside of the normal Christmas and birthday celebrations, the first was my resignation from the MG Car Club and the second, the purchase of a new day-car. My leaving the Car Club had nothing to do with my decision to sell my MG TF. It was my day-car for ten years, had completed over 100,000 miles and although still going strong I had been thinking about finding a replacement for some time. I was considering three cars as potential replacements. I had decided that given my age this would probably be my last day-car purchase and therefore felt under no constraint with regard to justifying the cost to myself. The three cars in contention were a Porsche Panamera, an Aston Martin Vantage and a Jaguar F-Type.

I was almost ready to close a deal on a Panamera when an advert for a F-Type Jaguar caught my eye. The car had only one owner, was nine years old, but had only done 18,000 miles! I have wanted a Jaguar since I was seven years old, when my pal and I would look for Mark VII Jaguars parked near the beach in our home town of Weymouth.

I am now the proud owner of the car in the above photo and can’t wait for some good weather so I can drop the hood. Early spring we will take a run down to the South of France, but it will still be Bridget that goes on the long runs. The Jaguar is a 3.6 litre turbo version, 0-60mph of 5.5 seconds and a top speed of 160mph. After four months of owning it, I believe it is a worthy replacement of the E-type. I have named it Hugo.

So what was the trigger for my leaving the MG Car Club? Whenever I was in the UK, I would be fairly active in the club even though club events are not really my thing. However, I have probably met around a third of the members in the UK and, during my travels, many of the Overseas members, particularly in Australia, South Africa, the USA and Canada. They really are a wonderful, friendly, and helpful group of people, all with the common enthusiasm for the MG brand, and it was because of them that I would do my bit to help progress the club.

As with all organisations, there are differences of opinion from time to time particularly with people that grow their own fiefdoms (big fish, small pond syndrome). I clearly upset one such individual. The club has processes in place to deal with such differences, recognising the reality of life and making available a way to resolve such difficulties, it is a Complaints Procedure.

Totally unbeknown to me, the clubs’ Chairman made a complaint to the Executive Committee regarding something that I either said or did. This should have been refered to the complaints procedure, but instead the executive took it upon themselves to hear the evidence and conclude that I had indeed committed this terrible offence. They decided to suspend me for a period of four weeks from all club activity!

The first I knew of any of this was when I received an e-mail, and within an hour of that, a written copy, hand delivered, informing me of the decision. I responded that as I knew nothing of the accusation, evidence or the hearing I thought they were acting like the Governments of Iran and similar other countries where sentence without trial are reportedly commonplace. They then had the audacity to send me a further e-mail approximately 1 week later saying that they had considered the appeal, without any further evidence, and upheld the punishment. I’m afraid it was at this stage I behaved disgracefully and told them to poke it up their ***. Hopefully, the people responsible for their Articles of Association clarify whether or not the Executive Committee are bound by their rules or are free to act in an authoritarian manner!

So I am back to just enjoying my cars and travelling whenever the chance is available. I wish the members of the MG Car Club everything they wish for themselves.