A miracle

You will find several posts about the damage inflicted on my, once beautiful, 1978 MGB GT by one Jesús Berenguer and his Audi.

The car still hasn't been repaired, and it probably never will be, but its technical inspection, the ITV (equivalent to the MOT in the UK) became due a couple of days ago. I couldn't take it in on time because I had taken the car to a garage to see if they thought it could get through the ITV. They reckoned with a new headlight to replace the cracked one and a bit of persuasion to the bodywork to get the headlamp angle right, the car might go through the test. It took them just 14 days to replace the headlamp! They were worried that the exhaust emisions might be too high for it to pass but they said repalcing the floats, or doing anything, to the SU carbs was beyond their technical know how. They did nothing else. Rapid service eh?

So, with nothing to lose except the 40€ test fee I took the car in for it's ITV today. I nearly turned around on the journey, I expected my old friend to be humiliated. I wondered if the staff would laugh openly at me. The car was popping and banging, running like a bag of nails. It was filthy, it has paint flaking off all over the place and, of course, it's dented.

But it sailed through the test. Emissions, lights, brakes, steering all good. I was truly amazed.