Even if you are not superstitious or religious, it’s sometimes obvious that some things are destined to happen. For Geoff Mansfield, he was meant to own GP6662. This 1931 M-type Coupé had slipped out of his grasp twice so, when it remerged 17 years after he first saw it, he made sure it wasn’t going to escape again. He has now owned it for 26 years and does at least 3,000 miles a year in it, including several long-distance runs.
He first fell in love with MGs when he was just four years old. World War II was just ending and an American airman in uniform pulled up in a bright red PA. “He saw I was looking at it and offered me sixpence to keep an eye on it while he was away. It doesn’t seem like a lot now but, at the time, it bought three ice creams. I told myself I’d have one of those cars one day.”
Geoff wanted to keep the promise to himself and got close when, in which Douglas Bader’s character drives an M-type. “I looked at a really rough one with a Ford engine and a chopped-off rear end for £75 and thought I’d pass on it, which was just as well as the next day I got posted to Malaya.”
