“There is no passenger comfort to speak of,” says owner Jack Smittle of his hand-crafted MG TC boattail special. “Special,” being midcentury Britspeak for the modified cars that, had they been born as American Fords instead of British MGs and such, would have been called “hot rods.”
That lack of comfort is by design, as this car is a tribute to the racing machines produced by the MG factory’s “Insomnia Crew” back in the 1930s. Race cars, as a rule, are built to win races—not to provide grand-tourer luxury over long distances. In the 1930s, racing was a test of both driver and machine.
That’s not to say that this isn’t a fun little speedster. It is that entirely, from its design and conception to the admittedly tiring experience of open-air motoring. This MG has all the appeal of a motorcycle but without the sense that buy-in was as simple as opening a line of credit. That level of personalization—to create, essentially from scratch, a tribute to history that you can drive on the public road is what’s at the heart of a project like this.
Ohio is undeniably modified-car country. From the Ford Model T-based speedsters of the 1910s and ’20s through the Willys gassers of the 1960s and ’70s and so on into the present, something leads Ohioans to put their own stamp on the automobile. Maybe it goes
