Welcome back to Shitbox Showdown, where we pit two cars against each other to see which one seems less nightmarish. Today’s cars are cheap, fun, and rusty, which seems about right given my automotive history. Before we jump into things, lets take a look at how yesterday’s battle played out.
Despite the absolute terror of old German car problems, it looks like the 500SL took the win over the Oldsmobile. In fairness, I’d also choose the 500SL, simply because I love that old Mercedes build quality and this cabriolet seems ripe for a six-speed swap.
From flagships to dinghies, let’s switch gears and look at two cars barely bigger than those ginormous FILA dino-stompers you see Instagram influencers wearing. Of course I’m talking about tiny little sports cars from many, many decades ago. While relatively fast and loose safety standards allowed these cars to exist, an equally fast and loose approach to corrosion resistance means that not many examples exist today. Let’s look at some terrible examples for not much cash.
1974 MG Midget – $2,500 Canadian
Engine/drivetrain: 1,275 cc four-cylinder, four-speed manual gearbox, rear-wheel-drive
Location: Toronto, Ontario
Odometer reading: 90,000 km
Runs/drives? Runs but might not drive
If we’re talking about cars the size of shoes, how could we not include an MG Midget? While the model name hasn’t exactly aged well, this pint-sized British sports car is from a time when your knees were crumple zones and roadsters were affordable. Sure, it wasn’t the quickest toy in British Leyland’s arsenal, but it’s an endearing little thing that sparks heaps of joy.
Unfortunately, time hasn’t been kind to this non-PC MG as the body looks new parent levels of tired. A gash on the left front fender shows clear evidence that James Bondo had his hands on this thing at some point in the past, while the paint appears to show more orange peel than a Tropicana factory. It’s also quite obvious that this car used to be blue, so the change to red seems a bit unfortunate. By far the biggest issue is the requirement of “transmission work,” which is usually classified ad lingo for “chuck the gearbox in the bin and find another.”
However, there is some good news. The chromework appears to be in good shape, while this thing wears a tasty set of rostyle wheels. Plus, the MG appears to be largely complete, even if its dashboard is cracked six ways from Sunday. If the underside isn’t completely rotten, this could be a fun weekend beater that you could flog up gravel roads without a care in the world for the paintwork. What’s more, parts availability for these things is quite good, so it won’t be too hard to source all the baubles necessary to bring this thing back into banger spec. Forget getting it perfect, get it running and wear that patina with pride.
1971 Opel GT – $2,000 Canadian
Engine/drivetrain: 1.9-liter four-cylinder, four-speed manual, rear-wheel-drive
Location: Toronto, Ontario
Odometer reading: 116,981 miles
Runs/drives? Sort-of runs, doesn’t drive
Readers, I have a confession to make: Because the Toronto car world is relatively small, I’ve actually wrenched on this exact shitbox. I was there when it sputtered to life after decades of dormancy, so I’m probably qualified to tell you just how good or bad it is. Any Opel GT is hard to find in North America, so in case you’re not familiar with this baby Corvette, let’s run through the basics.
With Kadett bones and coachwork by Brissonneau & Lotz, the Opel GT was a shot at an attainable German sports coupe of the 1960s. It’s roughly the size of a Croc, features some of the coolest pop-up headlights ever fitted to a production car, and likely confounded Buick dealerships once it arrived in America for sale. Much like the Volkswagen Karmann Ghia, the only body seams you’ll find are for moving panels, which makes cosmetic repair quite the challenge.
As for this Opel GT, it looks to have been in a fight rather than be in fighting shape. Getting it on the road will require heaps and heaps of work. The floors and inner sills have been patched quite well, but the trailing arm pockets are crustier than that sock you kept under your bed as a teenager and the front subframe needs a spot of welding. Oh, and everything but the engine and rear axle needs to be installed. No pressure, right?
However, the 1.9-liter four-cylinder engine runs like a top off of an external tank, while the interior’s in surprisingly decent shape. What’s more, most of the bits to finish this thing are actually on hand, so it wouldn’t be impossible to get back together, even if this is a car you’ll never be able to get pretty. Hey, the current owner refers to it as his “garbage son,” so that gives you a good idea of how it is.
Well, here we are. Two rather scabby examples of small, nimble sports cars. Are you choosing the dubiously repainted MG or the visibly-crusty Opel?
(Photo credits: Kijiji sellers)
Having worked in an MG dealership when this car was new, I would go for the Opel… mostly because it has a roof, which I’ll need over my head if I ever brought either of these two home.
I have seen too many bondo buggy MG’s. I would sooner start with the rust issue I can see versus discovering how bad the rust was and poorly patched up later. They both could end up with the same amount of restoration and welding. So might as well go with those glorious headlights. Sorry, I was looking at my neighbor taking out the garbage. Oh, yes to the Opel as well.
I’m tempted to go with the MG for the triple windshield wipers (I never knew they had triple wipers!), but the Opel’s opposing-direction wipers are cool-enough for me.
I once had an MGB with the triple wipers and they always put a smile on my face when it rained. As did being able to put the top up without leaving the driver’s seat.
Less so trying to easily replace the blades though.
Back in the late 1970’s I owned two Opel GT’s at different times while a college student (they were just cheap used cars then). If you’ve never driven one it’s a very fun car that feels much more special than it’s pedestrian bones and spec would suggest.
They were never that common even back when in production. In the U.S. they were sold by Buick dealers, an epic mismatch if there ever was one. I’d often get approached and asked about it. People didn’t know what it was, too small to be a Corvette, and assumed it was some kind of big-buck European exotic.
By today’s standards 90 hp seems laughable (the base engine was an even smaller 1.1 liter with just 60 hp). By the benchmarks of the time it was more than respectable, and held its own nicely against its peers (MGB, Fiat 124, Triumph Spitfire, etc.). It had more than enough power to keep up with contemporary traffic. Being such a tiny car (it’s even smaller in person than it looks in pics) it felt much faster than it was. Handling was exceptional, as good if not better than most comparable ‘sports’ cars.
And the styling – gorgeous! The interior had the proverbial airplane cockpit feel, and the headlights were the ultimate touch – they rotated sideways, through a mechanical linkage and big lever on the console next to the shifter. They would roll into place with a loud, satisfying thunk, like lowering the landing gear on a fighter plane. As a stupid college sophomore, I felt like James Bond tooling around in the car.
It wasn’t very ‘practical’, but it wasn’t meant to be. It was intended to simply be fun, in the old-school way of how a car feels to drive in the seat of your pants, how it makes you feel and not obsessing over the brag value of meaningless ‘numbers’ (1/4 mile, 0-60, Nurburgring lap times, etc., I don’t lap the Nurburgring on a daily basis so I couldn’t care less).
Cars like the Opel GT are special and rare. I’ve spent years perusing ads for another one, but nice ones are hard to find and usually far away. The Miata captures much of the essence. But for me the current car that most closely matches the soul of the Opel GT, in size, contemporary performance, and spirit, is the Subaru BRZ. I bought a 2019, it’s a total nostalgia trip and brings back those sweet Opel GT memories (and the love of my life, drop-dead model gorgeous, brilliant, interesting, sweet, way out of my league girlfriend at the time who’d ride in it with me) every time I drive it.
BUT… on this one I’m with @ADDvanced. It’s a rust bucket. My 7 year old Opel GT’s back then were already filled with bondo. Taking this one apart will probably reveal more rot than metal. This is a car only for a very skilled and ambitious welder.
I’d go with the MG. The Opel is definitely different and not something you see even as much as MGs, but the Midget is going to be easier to fix up and keep running. And I’ve driven a Midget- even as underpowered as they are, they’re great fun.
It’s funny, I tried to buy this exact Opel about 20 years ago. At the time, I’d only seen them in books and honestly thought they were some kind of exotic.
18 years later, my friend is telling me about an Opel he bought, I told him the story of the one I tried to buy and it turns out it’s the same car.
I absolutely love the opel, but in this case, that is a parts car or a way to get so far underwater in terms of time/money invested vs cost. MG looks like you could potentially get it on the road fairly cheap, the opel is quite literally swiss cheese. That car is never seeing the road again unless someone like DT takes it on.
The MG.
Fundamentally, the unique driving experience. Tiny, close-to-the-ground roadster enhances the slow-car-fast experience better than enclosed 2 door coupe. And I love how the Opel looks and appreciate it’s German Corolla-like mechanicals.
But this MG falls into the relatively short run of round rear wheel arches, which was ’72-’74. The chassis ran from ’58 – ’79, so three years is a small percentage. It’s easier to beef up the wheel/tire combo with those. ALSO…chrome bumpers and all that goes with it not having rubber bumpers, the big(!) 1275 engine, virtually every part possibly needed readily available and cheap. The MG could be up and running, putting a smile on your face, while the Opel owner is still trying to source new linkage to make those awesome rotating headlights work.
PREACH!
I can smell both of these cars from my desk.
And now, so can I. Thanks for that.
They both look rough, so I’ll choose the one that would be far cooler when restored…the Opel.
Spinny-roundy lights and a proper roof, it has to be the Opel for me. Plus it’s so pretty.
One of my relatives has a blue Opel GT that I have coveted since I was a wee lad, so I chose Opel, even though the rust scares me.
Opel is just so wonderfully unusual, popups always for the win (is that the operating level I see near the dash?), and I can live with the roach motel interior. Plus the fun of telling people “It’s a GM.”
Plus, the repaint of the MG bothers me. It would bother me every time I approached the door to get in it as I’d never unsee that tiny blue patch.
The assistant manager of my first-job McD’s drove an Opel GT (& was a skydiver to boot). Gave me a ride once at night — and on that authority I can confirm: the lights were actuated by the console lever near the dash.
But ever since outgrowing my childhood infatuation with the C3 Vette, I’ve come to regard the wannabe GT as an ugly little thing. (And I find its description frightening.)
I went with the MG.
It was the Opel as soon as I saw the headline. A student teacher at my elementary school (shout out to Walker Open School in Flint, Michigan!) had one when I was in second grade and I’ve wanted one ever since.
You would have thought that with my username containing an “MG” that I would have gone with the MG Midget…I did not. I went with the Opel GT. Who wouldn’t want Opel Kadett mechanicals wrapped around a beautiful sheet metal shape? TH was right, these Opel GTs are much rarer than the Midget, even though most of the production was exported to the US of A. I agree that the side rotating headlamp buckets were very cool. Manually operated too. Mmmmmmm, I wonder how hard it would be to get this example down to SE Michigan??? Paperwork, it’s only paperwork.
I went MG. Closer to me although neither is all that far. My uncle is into MGs so I’d have someone with some knowledge helping me. My father in law also had an MG but I think his help would be limited to misnaming parts and long tangents about the corvair he used to own while working on the MG.
I was all ready to vote the GT. I’m a Vette guy and the shape alone says “Do it!” but all the issues, it’s way easier to get parts for the Midget and it’s a much better starting point. Gotta go with it over the GT. Pretty sure there are even mods to get Miata engine in the Midget if you want to restomod it if I remember right. Been a while since I looked…
Dude, you can put an RX-7 engine in a Midget. Think of the possibilities with that one…
A million years ago, my Dad bought a someone-else’s-project Triumph Spitfire with a rotary heart transplant. The guy he bought it from had it as a father-son project that ended when the father discovered the son was using parts money for cocaine.
Anyway, one day it literally spit fire that spread to a parts washer and nearly burned the garage down. Sold it not long after…
I have to give a thumbs up to a story that includes a home brew engine swap, cocaine, and a nearly catastrophic fire.
*Pam cheering for cocaine gif*
I have a daughter named Opal, so I would really like to have an Opel in the driveway.
Reason enough in my book. This one would be sure to stay in your driveway so you could enjoy the feeling 24/7.
MG by far. It’s one of the “ideal roadster” torch bearers from when that concept was still taking off. It’s small, lightweight, has two seats, a roof that goes down, and you row your own. There’s a reason that concept has existed virtually unchanged since this era…it’s one of the most perfect driving experiences there is.
Don’t get me wrong, I love POWAAAAA as much as anyone, but some of the best drives I’ve ever had have been in a Miata on a crisp day with sparsely populated roads. There’s just nothing else quite like it.
My complaint with most cars produced with this design formula is that aerodynamic efficiency and acceleration both tend to be afterthoughts. This MG is no exception. This layout/design formula actually lends itself extremely well to these things and by not playing to them, the car misses out on its inherent strengths.
That is why I picked a Triumph GT6 to convert to electric, instead of an MG. For its time, the GT6 was a slippery little bastard, and overall CdA value is still greatly less than most modern cars and competitive with the current gen Prius. The ADU1B race car could reach 137 mph on 111 horsepower on the Mulsanne Straight at LeMans. The MG Midget, while significantly smaller, has about twice the drag.
If someone designed a mass-production car with these variables in mind and sought to make the lightest, slipperiest bastard they could, with today’s tech there’s potential for something that could get 80+ miles per gallon using a modern Mazda inline-6 turbodiesel without even trying to hypermile it(and 100+ mpg if you do), 0-60 mph in well under 4 seconds with the accelerator floored, the potential to top 200 mph without needing more than 300 horsepower to do it, and on a track it would run circles around all of the high-dollar exotics because they’d weigh 2x as much while this thing would have a similar power-to-weight ratio.
AND it wouldn’t cost much to build such a car. We’re talking Miata-like price potential, or even cheaper. Perhaps that’s a big reason automakers won’t build something like this. They wouldn’t be able to justify “exclusive” high dollar halo cars for rich people anymore and make supercar performance attainable for the masses, and it would expose “the Emperor has no clothes” regarding fuel efficiency over the last half century. Not a good strategy for maximizing profits because then a company can no longer justify price discrimination.
I eagerly await the small, extra slippery bastard. Sounds like an absolutely amazing car, and I actually haven’t experienced any of the small roadster options that have more power on tap such as a Boxster S/GT4 or something like that…so I can’t say how much I think it improves the driving experience as the only fast roadsters I’ve ever driven are of the pony car variety.
Speaking of which, I feel like we’ve already had some of that emperor has no clothes experience with said pony cars. I know I’ve gotten some complaints about my excessive Camaro advocacy here but you can get a barebones LT1 for around 35k (or SS for around 40) that’ll hit 60 in the high 3s/low 4s and touch 180 with the right tires.
…the main issue is that it’s ridiculously compromised as a daily and horrendous on gas, but those were super car numbers only 10 years ago. If something smaller and more efficient could duplicate that type of performance for the same price I’d be the first in line…but unfortunately it’s a six figure proposition where things stand today.
In addition to my MG (and a few other cars) I have a 2000 Boxster S. I use the S as a daily. It’s a great modern equivalent of an old school roadster, and the smallest Boxster. No nannies other than ABS, but includes modern convenience features such as AC, power windows, hydraulic power steering, and a power top. 250hp is enough for it to be fun along with mid-engine handling.
Each generation of Boxster got more power, but also grew in size, weight, complexity, safety nannies, and comfort. I prefer the 986 generation for it size and simplicity (if that can be said for a German car).
I had to go with the MG
R&It’s 0-60 in 25 back in 69 was really breathtaking stuff. (If you had asthma)
It’s always more fun to drive a slow car fast than a fast car slow
Always loved the Opel GT, never quite understood the appeal of MGs.
Easy decision for me.
As someone who recently became an MGB owner, I think they are better than their reputation suggests. The engine is torquey and feels more powerful than 95 hp. It handles pretty darn well. The engine is dead simple to work on and the electricals are not THAT bad, simply because there is not a lot. You have ignition, lights, heater fan, and fuel pump. Plus, girls think its cute.
I voted for the Opel since I’ve wanted one since I saw a new one at a dealer. But, this is a day when the poll really needs another option: None of the above.
Getting that Opel reassembled, with its near-fatal flaws, definitely isn’t for the faint of heart or wallet. I guess I’d try to offer a reduced price to remove the garbage son from his driveway and hope to turn a profit parting it out.
I wanted an option of “I’ll take the Opel for $300”
Definitely the Opel GT. It was a relatively slippery car compared to its contemporary offerings, with a drag coefficient of 0.39.
A greatly more slippery aeromodded version of this car called the Rekordwagen was built as a prototype by Opel and set a land speed record, reaching 123 mph on a 2.1L 4-cylinder 95 horsepower diesel engine in 1972, and getting about 80 mpg in normal driving. Its gearing wasn’t even optimized, or it could have been much faster.
Opel also made an electric prototype of this car in 1973 called the Elektro GT, making 160 horsepower with two DC motors and a pack of NiCd batteries. It was heavy, at 1700kg, but could do the 1/4 mile in about 16.9 seconds.
So you know what I’d do. Aeromod the shit out of it to make it similar to the prototype streamliners mentioned above(I’d still retain both seats), and then either convert it to electric or find an old mechanical-injected diesel-powered lump to run it off of. Can’t go wrong either way, and you could end up with a little backroad terrorist that compared to modern cars is relatively inexpensive to run, easy to work on, fast, and extremely efficient.
Yes, but this PARTICULAR Opel is swiss cheese man. You can see light coming in from all the floor boards. Imagine taking it down and finding how much rust is on it, the rockers are already gone, I bet suspension mounts are gone, that thing is never seeing the road again.
If this were a “this car vs that car, which is cooler” sure, the opel is cooler, but that one should have been crushed/recycled years ago.
I can hammer sheet metal into the shape of replacement parts, and I know someone who can weld. It MIGHT be salvageable as a restomod. Finding a clean low-rust Opel GT is going to be so expensive that this may be a viable proposition, especially if most of the work is sweat equity. I imagine the rust on this is worse than most LBCs that were driven in the rust belt and later left to rot.
My GT6 started out as a total rusted heap of shit with no floorboards and rotted rocker panels when I obtained it almost 20 years ago. It first ran as an EV in 2012, with all of the significant rust removed and replacement metal put in. Most of the cost was EV parts, and I have $18k total in the car. The restoration of the body, including others’ labor, was about $4k. Not bad, all things considered.
I still need to finish the car though.
In high school, Dad, of the aforementioned Spitfire cocaine project, bought a GT6+ for my sister and I to share when we started driving. It, too, had some pretty bad rocker cancer that we bodged a fix to, then covered the orange paint with a glorious yellow.
It cruised the drag of Odessa, Texas with as many as 6 teens crammed aboard.
My sister eventually destroyed the clutch, and dear old Dad got rid of it. Sis got Mom’s old LTD, Mom got a pimptastic yellow and gold ’76 Thunderbird, and Dad dragged home a 1960 El Camino that became our father-son project that involved no cocaine.
It did very nearly burn the garage down, tho. Seems to be a bit of a theme…
“Finding a clean low-rust Opel GT is going to be so expensive”
Actually, wrong. I see decent ones with automatics go for $5k-ish on a fairly regular basis, given how rare they are. The autos are cheap because automatic garbage.
I wasn’t even aware an automatic Opel GT existed.
That being the case, this would be perfect for an EV conversion. Gut the transmission, swap in a Ford 9-inch rear end, and put in as powerful of an electric drive system as can fit. You could have an immensely fun car that is also efficient. Bone stock, this would be a 250 Wh/mile car as an EV, but with attention to aerodynamic streamlining, there is potential to drop that to 150 Wh/mile, which will greatly reduce the battery cost for a given amount of range.
I’m assuming Opel parts are considerably more valuable than MG parts, so buy the Opel for less and sell the parts for more.
Other than maybe the glass, I’m not seeing a lot of parts that anyone should be buying off this Opel.
I voted for the Opel, I have a soft spot for those. Though, I have no way of defending that purchase. The MG is more drivable than the Opel.