1967 MGB RALLY CAR
I can’t say that I’ve ever given much thought to my old MGB getting stolen until recently. You see, I grew up in the country where we always left our keys in the ignition when we went into a shop and where car crime was ‘something that happened in London’ – or so we imagined.
In any case, I never felt that my car was desirable enough to warrant criminal attention even when I traded my worn-out ‘65 Fiat 500 for a Cortina 1500 two-door Super MkI.
Even a decade later, when I was working in Paris and my daily driver was a Ferrari (yes, young people could afford to buy and – even more significantly – insure such things back then... £6000 for a rusty Dino with an MoT, anyone?) I parked the car on the street and never experienced any trouble. In short, my middle name was ‘complacent’. But that all changed towards the end of last year when I spoke with a group of CCW readers who had recently had their much-loved classics stolen. As well as the heartbreak that comes with the loss of a treasured car with much personal history, I heard just how quickly and easily gangs of highly professional thieves can spirit a car away.
I’m not a total idiot so I always remove the keys and lock my MG at night. And because it is a competition car it has an ignition cut-out switch from which I remove the big red ‘key’. But I’ve driven convertibles for 50 years, usually leaving the roof down and the tonneau on all summer, so I’ve always been well aware that a pathetic budget door lock is never going to stop anyone reaching in. However, an ignition cut out and a steering wheel bar-lock makes it unstealable because it’s undriveable, right? Wrong!
One big jump on my learning curve of listening to wise CCW readers was how locks and ignitio
