That Le Mans MG Midget

Sir,

I was fascinated and delighted to read your article on Lewin Spittle’s “Historic MG Midget”. As a regular reader, I know your passion for accuracy, so I thought I would correct a couple of details about the car’s history in the early 1950s.

I was the Oxford undergraduate to whom Mr. Spittle sold the MG. That was in 1950 and I paid him, I think, £100. I kept the car for seven years, although in all that time I could never once afford to fill its vast 15-gallon tank. I used it as regular daily transport and took it, incidentally, to Italy, not Spain. It was unusually reliable—considerably more so than a Lotus Elite I owned a few years later—but in 1957 the engine began to give up the ghost. I managed to drive it on two cylinders to a local mechanic and sold it, as it stood, to a friend. He has never spoken to me since. I saw the car once more, around 1960, parked outside the Hampstead Police Station. It must, presumably have been soon after that that Mr. Spittle found it again in Piccadilly. It is comforting to know that it is now restored to its original glory.

London EC4 A. ALVAREZ