Yahoo Autos Junkyard Gem: 1976 MG Midget
During the middle 1970s, British Leyland offered car shoppers in North America four different two-seat convertible sports cars: the Triumph TR6, the Triumph Spitfire, the MGB and the MG Midget (the convertible version of the Triumph TR7 didn't go on sale here until the 1979 model year). Of those four, the cheapest was always the Midget, and there was a time when those affordable, fun Midgets roamed all over the highways of California. Today's Junkyard Gem is one of those cars, found in a San Francisco Bay Area self-service boneyard a couple of months ago.
The Midget name goes way back in MG history, to the Morris Garages Limited company in 1928. That's when the M-Type Midget went on sale, and lots of other Midgets followed over the next few decades. This generation of Midget began life as a 1961 model, and it was an Austin-Healey Sprite with MG badges installed. Sprites and Midgets were essentially identical (and were collectively known as "Spridgets"), but the Sprite got the axe after 1971 while Midgets were built through 1980.
In 1976, the MSRP of a new Midget was $3,895, or about $21,252 in 2023 dollars. The 1976 Triumph Spitfire was lighter (1,828 pounds versus the Midget's 1,854 pounds), but its sticker price was $4,250 ($23,189 now) and it had three fewer horses under the hood.
Of course, those horsepower numbers were hilariously low for both cars (which, starting in 1974, shared variations of the same 1.5-liter Standard SC engine). This one was rated at 55.5 horsepower.
Earlier US-market Midgets had dual SU carburetors, but a single Stromberg was used for the Malaise Era versions.
