Midge Owners' and Builders' Club
Jim Hewlett's Page
Owing to a series of unfortunate events I currently have three Midges. However it is not my fault and I can explain if you will bear with me for a moment.
I was born on a farm and consequently have a weakness for Land-Rovers and Machinery. Traditionally farmer's sons are generalists and have to turn their hands to anything needed to save money.
As a result of my upbringing I was able to build a sort of 'Special' made from bits and an Opus chassis that I found in a scrap-yard. It failed in the end, but taught me quite a lot before I left the farm. Arriving in Edinburgh a few years later I bought a Land-Rover for no particular reason and drove that around for a while. A local Land-Rover specialist (Alex Lindsay of Broxburn) supplied me with a part built Ford based Midge. That's the red one. Part way through completing the Red Midge I found a green one in the deepest south of England and thought that it would do to keep me driving while I finished the red one. Driving it up 400 miles from Somerset was startlingly uneventful, and I started using it to pootle around the neighbourhood, at the same time as modifying it of course, and eventually both cars were functional and on the road.
At about this point the identity of the red Midge's donor became a little vague and a couple of rather intractable mechanical problems arose which made me think of swapping the Red Midge body onto a Triumph Chassis. I found a part built example in Essex and, equally accidentally, bought a Mk4 Spitfire and a trailer full of bits as well. Having extended the garage to cover the Spitfire and the Ferguson tractor, I have managed to get the third Midge started and am now contemplating the fairly major exercise of a whole body transplant. The new Midge has a few significant problems in the body, so I shall not feel too bad about stripping it down, and the mechanicals seem quite well sorted. It will probably become known as 'The red Midge' but alternatives would be Lazarus, Frankenstein or Borg. If the red body won't go onto the Herald chassis I might end up with three again. The saga continues.
Update
The red Midge body is now on the blue(ish) Midge body and I have sold the redundant red Midge chassis and running gear and the 'blue' Midge bodywork. The composite machine is now called the red Midge and looks from the outside much as it was. The important running gear and chassis is however now Triumph rather than Ford and I was down to two Midges, one red one green. However, life being what it is I accidentally bought a 4th Midge (silver as it is unpainted alloy) so I am back up to three...and an MX5.
