​Scimitars e Cimitarra 

Given the opportunity in early 1983 to buy a sports car for a bit of weekend fun and something to tinker with, I went on the hunt for an MGB, having owned one at the time they were current. After a fruitless search to purchase something rust free, within my meagre budget, I started to look elsewhere. This culminated in the purchase of HJB 171K, an automatic SE5a, finished in Highland Purple. I've always been a bit impetuous with purchases and what I thought might be a cosmetic rolling restoration, quickly became a project way beyond my scope of expertise. The GTE was acquired without any real research into the marque and I took the plunge simply because the seller was local, it seemed to drive well, had been in daily use and looked like a lot of car for very little money! Instead of using it for a bit, I stuck it in the garage and started pulling bits off, to repair the cracked and crazed bodywork. The pile of parts got bigger, as did the amount of work required to sort the body and I started to loose enthusiasm. This was not helped by visiting the RSSOC National Rally, where I saw a Coupe in the flesh for the first time and decided that was the car I really wanted. So a few calls were made to potential buyers in the trade, a deal was struck and Graham Rose of Airevale Motors turned up with a trailer, towed by a V6 coupe and took her away.

 

Postscript:

I had assumed that Airevale would have broken the car for parts, but a check on the Gov.UK MoT History site, showed it was last tested in June 2012 and still finished in the same colour! A more recent check, however, has shown that this MoT ran out in June 2013, so it's now either off the road or scrapped.