Ripley Informal Pride of Ownership Evening - 17 July

I went along last night to the Ripley Natter annual informal Pride of Ownership evening which this year was held at “Fairmile” in Cobham. The venue is a large pub and restaurant with very extensive grass areas which can be used for parking and car display. The MG representation ranged from 1930s to modern TFs, with Brian Moyse and I as RV8 reps and Gavin Bailey in attendance, but not with car as he had come straight from work. The big surprise though was to find that the largest part of the grassed area had been reserved for the Corvette Owners Club and there must have been at least a hundred of them, with cars from the early sixties right up to a brand new one on display. One or two of the MG owners looked rather askance at this display of brash and noisy cars but Gavin and I went to look, after all they are V8s, albeit very big ones . One particular 65 coupe caught Gavin’s eye so I took a picture of it. Later on some of the Corvette owners came over to look at the MGs and one was very enthusiastic and spent a long time talking to me. He turned out to be the owner of the coupe and told me he also has a 63 roadster in his garage. When he said he was seriously interested in acquiring an RV8 I told him about the website and the good and not so good points of the cars and mentioned that 25mpg was a readily attainable consumption figure. He replied that such economy would be very welcome compared with the 8 – 12 mpg of his Corvettes! So perhaps we should be looking for new members amongst the sub 20mpg brethren rather than in the sub 30 age group. (Al Barnett 18.7.08) V8 Register - MG Car Club - the leading group for MG V8 enthusiasts at www.v8register.net