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 Seeking information about a picture of an MG
 L2?
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rapide

United Kingdom
238 Posts

Posted - 24/12/2021 :  20:37:30  Show Profile
I took this photo sometime in the late 60s in Cambridge when the car was owned by a chap who was at the Engineering college . I remember his name as James Laurie , He had a chum called Alex Ritchie who stayed along the Chesterton road at St Regis Court. Sadly Alex was later to loose his life tragically in a ballooning accident. He owned a k1tourer. On several occasions we ventured north to Swaffham to visit The landlord of the" Norfolk Hero'.He had quite an extensive collection of Triple M bits which he stored in various pig pens in his back garden and was into aircraft as well. Quite a character ,affectionally known as the Rabbi owing to his long unkempt beard. Colin Ashby was his name. Does this ring any memories and what about the car?





I should add that a year prior to his fatal fall he had been accredited with saving the life of Sir Richard Branson by climbing out of the Virgin challengers capsule and jettisoning fuel tanks to avert a steep downward ascent and subsequent disaster .real Hero

Oz34

United Kingdom
2483 Posts

Posted - 24/12/2021 :  21:33:13  Show Profile
Hi Garry, in 1968 I was a general dogsbody for a freight cowboy airline called Transmeridian and lived in digs in Cambridge while working in their office at Teversham.
I saw an Old English White L2 at various times in the city and, having moved back to Sussex in early '69 I saw an L in Exchange & Mart with a Cambridge number. I could afford the asking price and called at 0800 on Thursday prepared to say hold it, I'll drive from West Sussex to Cambridge when I put the phone down and will buy it. It had already gone so I asked if it was an L2. Yes; massive disappointment!
I guess that must have been the car.

Dave
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Westbury

United Kingdom
1940 Posts

Posted - 24/12/2021 :  23:36:21  Show Profile

Hello, Dave.
Your experience and disappointment seemed to occur with monotonous regularity as far as adverts for the sale of MGs were concerned back in the sixties and seventies. Always in a certain sales magazine published on Thursdays. I missed out on a couple of L types having telephoned very early on Thursday morning to be told the cars were sold which was extremely upsetting to say the least.
The reasons for this were revealed to me a few years ago. Unfortunately, I am not at liberty to say more but I’m sure you can put two and two together!!
Best wishes,
Chris
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Oz34

United Kingdom
2483 Posts

Posted - 26/12/2021 :  12:30:48  Show Profile
Hi Chris,

Not my only 6 cylinder disappointment then. Transmeridian moved its office to Stansted and I was living in a pub in the village frequented by Channel Airways crews. One of the girls had an NA 2 seater which she wanted to sell. Unfortunately she wouldn't come down to a price I could afford.

On a non MG note, one of her colleagues had two Fiat Nuova 500s both the same shade of grey and similar numbers, one LHD & one right. The LHD one had a problem which Daddy said he would fix if she got it home to the wilds of Essex so we tied the two together. Unsurprisingly there were lots of double takes as we went through the various villages!

Dave
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John46

United Kingdom
21 Posts

Posted - 28/12/2021 :  17:22:29  Show Profile
I knew a James Robbie, (I think that`s how you spell his surname) and I frequently met at the St. Regis . Among James` cars he had a Blue single seat L Type. I had a white L1 in L2 body style, may have been the one in the picture. Before I had the car it was owned by my friend Dave Mcllenan,( tragically later killed in a plane crash on the Mendip Hills)I bought the car from Dave for £60 with unfinished body and drove it daily around Cambridge either to work at Pye Telecom or to the Tech College in East Road. Initially no weather equipment and a bodge of motor cycle front wings; money was tight as an apprentice!
I sold the car in late 1969 and bought it back in 2009.

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rapide

United Kingdom
238 Posts

Posted - 28/12/2021 :  21:30:22  Show Profile
Yes , it was James Robbie and not Laurie . He was living at the Chesterton end of Cambridge near Midsummer common and drove a green?minivan. Wonder what became of him. If it is your L you are welcome to the photo John . I expect our paths will cross someday
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DickMorbey

United Kingdom
3668 Posts

Posted - 29/12/2021 :  11:21:44  Show Profile
We have two L type owners with the surname Robbie recorded in the Register's annals.

James Robbie of Cambridge owned L0610 from April 1968 to July 1969. L0610 is described as a Lester bodied special. MJ 6190 is/was the reg. DVLA record shows that the most recent V5C was issued in 1998. The currently recorded owner is near Taunton.

James C Robbie of Hitchin is recorded as the owner of L2062 although the trail went cold many years ago. The reg WP 5071 is now on a Rover Metro...

George Eagle (F,L,N Registrar) may be able to add further enlightenment...



Dick Morbey, Register Secretary
PA-PB 0743
Frieth, Oxon, UK
secretary@triple-mregister.org
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Oz34

United Kingdom
2483 Posts

Posted - 29/12/2021 :  14:20:23  Show Profile
If sold in July '69, that sounds like the car I just missed. I doubt 2 Ls were sold in Cambridge in 1969!

Dave
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Simon Johnston

United Kingdom
5942 Posts

Posted - 29/12/2021 :  18:33:53  Show Profile
Dave,

If the car that James Robbie sold, perhaps in July 69, was L0610, then it was an L1, not an L2

Simon J
J3437
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Oz34

United Kingdom
2483 Posts

Posted - 29/12/2021 :  20:43:21  Show Profile
So I understand from this thread Simon however, it does seem as though it was an "L1 in the style of an L2" and the car I used to see in Cambridge LOOKED like an L2 but could just as easily have been an L1. At that time I wouldn't have worried what it actually was as long as it looked like a 2 seater and indeed, how attitudes change with time. Now I would probably prefer an L1 Tourer to an L2.

Happy New Year to you both,

Dave
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Simon Johnston

United Kingdom
5942 Posts

Posted - 29/12/2021 :  22:39:55  Show Profile
Dave,

I’m not sure that I’d have known what an L Type was in 1969 never mind the difference between an L1 and an L2. That was my T Type period!

And a Happy New Year to yous uns. Let’s hope 2022 offers some respite.

Simon J
J3437
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Kaye Too

United Kingdom
1 Posts

Posted - 14/01/2022 :  15:42:37  Show Profile
Hello Gary - I well remember the landlord of the Norfolk Hero Pub "rabbi" Colin Ashby. My partner Paul Jaye & I bought several MGs from him back in the early 1970s including an F1 & L1. He was I suppose you would say a likeable rogue, whom we always used to think looked like a Pirate with his black straggly beard and long lank hair. He ran the pub which I think had a lot of local low-life, whom I think he managed to deal with effectively, but always seemed to be a man furtively looking over his shoulder. When he decided to close the pub and sell up in a hurry, I bought a lot of the pub artefacts including the dominoes, darts shove-ha'penny board, skittles and sundry fittings including the pub clock, which I still have: a nice mahogany-framed fusee dial clock made by three German-sounding brothers named Lickert, Schwerer and Ketterer in Norwich, tow of whom allegedly killed off the third partner in order to take over the business - maybe that was also an "Ashby" apocryphal legendary tale. I have some old photos somewhere in the archives which I will seek out for you. After selling the pub he "disappeared" somewhere into the more remote fenlands, where we rediscovered him on a smallholding in a very run-down out-of-the way location, and bought his last OHC MG and remaining spares and old MG log-books off him, and a very nice Victorian ceramic jardiniere stand of graded green glazed pilaster form which I also still have - he said he sold it because a horse had bolted from its stable into his kitchen, swiping the vase off the top with its tail as he tried toeject it! More anon when I find the pics...
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rapide

United Kingdom
238 Posts

Posted - 14/01/2022 :  18:09:46  Show Profile
Hi Colin ,
How interesting . You probably don't connect it but I was talking to you at the British Queen on New Years day . It was to the Norfolk Hero where we imbibed a few beers prior to him leading us to the small holding which as I recall was peppered with redundant pig styes wherein many triple m parts were stashed .
He was living with his girlfriend in a caravan at the bottom of the garden and would call up to the house where his wife lived in the mornings for his milk and papers . I recall he had an interest in light aircraft . It was on my final visit to him that I loaded up my MGB roadster with what remaining parts he had at the side of the pub .Seriously overloaded and snaking back to Cambridge rather as I had done subsequently when I had trundled down to Brighton /Hove in a Morris Traveller to buy a load of MG stuff from David Venables . The load just about reached the headlining and to cap it all my Golden retriever spread eagled above , bless him . Not to mention Mother in the passenger seat! Ah those halcyon days of the exchange and mart and endless hours searching scrap yards and often wild goose chases across the countryside . following leads !. I found quite a few MGs abandoned in the vicinity of East Anglian air bases but never was a one for recording my exploits!
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