The Steering Column
Left Hand Drive from our President

Well, it’s finally that time of the year: The start of the driving season! Yep, it’s upon us. And not a moment too soon, as I, for one, am more or less sick of the cold and snow we’ve had this past winter. The Amelia Island concours was the same weekend as the Swap Meet. The 24-Hours of Sebring are about to kick off as I write this. It’s sunny, and supposed to be in the mid 50’s today! Never mind that we may get snow on Sunday/Monday...

  We’ve got a packed driving season coming up, and I can’t wait, thanks to the dedication of Reinout Vogt. We’ve got the Secrets of JoDavies County tour coming up, thanks to the hard work of the VP, Ray Hansen. But what I’m looking forward to this year, is the Autocross with the Miata club. They put on a great, well organized, day of racing. Believe it or not, I upgraded the front sway-bar in our B two years ago, to be more competitive, and control body roll, while racing. However, since that time, I haven’t been able to make it to an Autocross! This year I’ll change that! But first, I have to figure out why fuel isn’t making it up to the engine bay. Tech Coordinator, Steve Skegg, believes I probably have a blockage at the intake to my fuel pump. Seems likely, and a good place to start. Once I get back into the garage, and start digging around, I’ll let you know what I find!

  Some of you may be reading this on your iPad, smartphone, or other device. That’s a new direction that the club is going in. So hopefully I’m just as witty, not to mention handsome, in print as well as digitally!

  Well, that’s enough for now, I need to head out to the garage to get a little dirty. Hopefully I’ll be seeing everybody at the various club events!

      See you on the road!

-- Dave Novak

	The Steering Column
	Right Hand Drive   from our Vice-President

“Did you ever wonder …” Ignoring the risk of plagiarism to quote one of my favorites, 60 Minutes Andy Rooney, did you ever wonder about car names? Not the marquee like Ford or Chevrolet and not the model names like Fiesta or Corvette. However, these may make an interesting conversation, given the strange names given to some models.
Watching television the other day (yes, a television, not a smart phone, tablet, computer or any other devise preferred by many these days) I saw a commercial for an insurance company featuring a young woman talking about her car, which was named Brad. You probably know or don’t care about the rest of the ad, but it got me wondering about car names.
As you know, my ’79 B is named Maggie and Susan likes to refer to her as Little Red. Maggie comes from MaGgie, and of course, Susan calls the car Little Red because of the size and color. We have always named our cars for some unknown reason and thought we may be in the minority in doing so. I don’t recall any of my long-time friends naming their cars, but they may have. We just never talked about it, probably not considered too masculine. There are a few noted named cars that come to mind. The Dukes of Hazard had a 1969 Dodge Charger they called General Lee. There was K.I.T.T. a talking 1982 Pontiac Trans-AM on Knight Rider, and who can forget Christine a 1958 Plymouth Fury from the Steven King movie by the same name.
We know a few of the club member’s cars, Emma, The Growler, and Flobear. Emma is Reinout’s M type, The Growler is Kim Tonry’s Green midget and Flobear is John Schroeder’s newly painted Green B. I am assuming Flobear is what John calls his car and Flobear is not John’s nickname. My apologies to John if I have this wrong. No doubt there are many more, but I cannot recall at the time of this writing.
Just thinking of one of the reasons to consider having a name for your car, how else do you beg them to start without using a name? Like “please start Maggie” instead of “start 1979 MGB” or worse “start you S.O.B.”. The profanity technique seldom works. I also tap my car on the dash, call her by name, and thank her for a job well done after a good drive. Just makes me feel good. Thinking I’m giving way too much information. No need to over-analyze my quirky relationship with my car. If you want to share your LBC’s name with others, you can e-mail them to me at ray@bhsuhr.com. Maybe we’ll publish them in the Driveline sometime in the future. Until my next rambling, drive safe and thank your named or nameless car for a job well done next time you take a good drive.

~~ Ray Hansen & Maggie     (AKA Little Red)