Mundy Singer History

The Narrative - Background

I was looking for a MGTD...


I had wanted one ever since high school. My good friend, Mo Graham, had a MGA which he let me drive once or twice in 1960, and I was hooked. It took me however, until 1974, after I felt somewhat settled and had enough money to even consider a MG.


For weeks I scoured the classified ads in the Denver and Colorado Springs newspapers. I ask friends, inquired of the local clubs, but could find no old MGs.


Summer came, and Cathy and I, along with two-year-old Meredith, packed up our 1970 VW van and headed

north to visit her family and perhaps take a trip all the way to Seattle to see her sister. I was convinced that parked outside of some rural barn would be the perfect car for the perfect price, and so through many small communities we took extra time to comb the back streets - unsuccessfully.


We stayed in Dubois, Wyoming several days with Cathy’s parents and then motored north through Yellowstone to her older sister Polly’s house in Hamilton, Montana. I thought surely in a town as large as Missoula there would be MG’s for sale, however, I could find none in their classified ads nor any available after talking to several auto repair shops. Within a few days, we headed west again ending up in the Seattle area and eventually ended up in Port Angeles, WA, with her sister, Mary.


It was in this area at a local grocery, that I picked up a Thrifty Nickel:

It could have been a MGTD, however, I couldn’t be sure and so called the number. I guy named Bruce explained

that the car was a Singer, not a MGTD. He was very enthusiastic and encouraged me to come to Whidbey Island

to take a look. The price was certainly right, and I was curious.


Bruce’s partial restoration involved stripping off most of the parts and throwing them into boxes and storing the

car underneath the eve of his garage. A quick look confirmed that water for many years had dripped off the garage

and rotted one half of the car’s body which was aluminum stretched over a wooden framework. I was sadly

disappointed, but Bruce was very persuasive. On my second visit I believe Cathy came with me and she too was

a little dismayed at how many parts were not assembled, but left it up to me to decide whether we took the car or

not. On my third visit, with Bruce’s help, I was able to pack all of the boxes onto the frame, wrap it in visquine,

and hook up a trailer hitch, so that it could be towed behind our VW van. I couldn’t wait for all the paperwork to

clear, so I signed a “three-ring notepaper” bill of sale and took a huge chance towing a car with outdated Washington plates and registration and no title! (OK, I was young...but that’s no real excuse).


Cluelessly, we continued our vacation up around the northwestern corner of Washington into the Ho rain forest.

The family with Meredith and her dog, Phoebe, were having a wonderful time as we camped and made our way

south along the coast.


Once into Oregon, first one, then another tire went flat or just blew out and disintegrated. Having used the two

extra tires buried under the load, we crippled into a small farming community on the rim and sought a miracle.

The first of many miracles happened when this small garage mechanic took a look at the last 1954 British tyre

(yup, I was starting to learn how to spell the British way) and was able to match it up with 2 new Massey-Ferguson

tractor tires!


With new skins we felt the stressful parts of the journey were over, however, we had not begun to define “stress”.

Rolling down one of the coastal hills, I heard a loud thump, the van veered left, then right as the Singer’s towbar

slammed into opposite sides of the van. Finally, the safety chains both snapped and in the rearview mirror I

watched the now free Singer swerve across both lanes and then slam into the guard rail of the bridge we were on!


I pulled off at the end of the bridge and ran back and dragged the little car, mule-fashion by its chains, as the

traffic swerved, honked and cursed me as they zoomed by. The nut had worked loose from the ball hitch and was

lost forever. We left the Singer on the side of the road and found a new ball assembly in the next town. By this

time I was halfway hoping someone would have stolen this black piece of crap, but there it was waiting for us.


Somewhere along the way I’d stopped into a library and started my research on this weird little car. Most of the

information came from old sports car magazines which I xeroxed after purchasing a mountain of dimes to feed

the machine. One article referred me to the North American Singer Owners Club. I called two of the four officers

to see if there were any actual running Singers I could look at on my way home. (Hard to believe, but three

of those founding members are still officers 44 years later!!!). One of them gave me the phone number of a guy

named Corey, a Singer owner in Sunnyvale, CA, who said he’d show me his Singer. So, it was off to California.

We blew another tire somewhere in northern California, took a wrong turn and ended up at a service delivery

dock at San Quentin prison but somehow arrived in Sunnyvale.


Corey, his wife and kids welcomed us, understanding our shell-shocked appearance once they heard our horror

stories of the trip down the coast. He was a bit strange, himself, but you’d maybe expect that of a man who had

four Singers, only one of which was running. He let me take photos and reluctantly answered most of my questions,

but didn’t offer to let me drive his Singer. I bought a workshop manual for an earlier model from him, and

we started for home.


Once again, we thought our troubles were behind us as we blazed across California enjoying each other, the

promise of a new exciting project and the gorgeous scenery.


That elation came to a painfully expensive end when our cozy red van sucked a valve just before the summit of

Donner Pass. Our sad little caravan was towed 9 miles into Truckee, CA where two days and several hundred

dollars later we limped across the desert and somehow made it across the Rockies to home.


I made room in our small garage for the Singer and had been working on it a year or two when I picked up

another Thrifty Nickel and found a 1950 MGTD just across town IN COLORADO SPRINGS!!! I have no idea

how I talked Cathy into us buying another British sports car. It was crazy!! Of course, we had no money and we had just had the big teacher’s strike. I was on the picket line and looking at the real possibility of

losing my job.


The MG had issues. One of its owners had shoe-horned a 1959 Corvette engine under the bonnet and put an

Oldsmobile rear end under it - all tricked out for drag racing. It took 15 years to get it back to MG (financed by

the sale of that fire-breathing Corvette engine), but most of those years we got enormous joy out of driving the MG  on short jaunts, mostly in Colorado.


The poor little Singer waited until 1992 for its fourth chance at restoration. We had just moved,

and I managed to get the frame and most of the other steel parts dip-stripped and primed, but other projects and

summer travels kept interfering with the final restoration.


It is now 2017 . I am 74 years old, and it’s definitely time for this ill-fated piece of British iron, ash and aluminum to roll down the road again!