Question: What does MG stand for?
Answer:   Mostly Geezers.

That's a joke I used to tell from time to time but it rings kind of true. Over the years going to MG events I have noticed that the base of MG enthusiasts is getting a lot older and only occasionally do I see younger participants.

So the question is, how do we get the young ones involved? In this day and age, that is a lot harder. Restorable MGs are drying up, daily drivers are becoming more rare and the owner of a restored example might be reluctant to let the kids play.

The key to getting kids involved in my opinion is “hands on”. That's how I did it with my son and I hope that's how he does it with his twins. My son and I are not afraid to let the twins touch our cars, they love to play mechanic.

There is a certain dance you have to perform with the kids when they are around our cars while we are working on them. We want to expose them to the cars, but we do not want to expose them to danger. I think that many people would keep their kids away for that reason, but I think this is a good opportunity to teach kids the proper way to behave around cars and tools. We need to impress upon them the dangers present around tools and certain parts of cars without scaring them to the point that they don't want to be around them. I asked my son Mark what his thoughts were, and this was his response.

I learned how to work on cars from my dad. I remember being very young when he disassembled his Coupe back in the early eighties. There wasn't much for me to do because of my skill level, but I do remember holding a wrench and turning a nut. I might have been three or four. After that the car was sort of a mystery while it sat awaiting restoration. There was a body shell and a wire harness hanging in the garage rafters, and some re-upholstered seats in the upstairs closet.

The Michalak twins washing dad’s car

When I was around ten my dad really started working on the car in earnest. There was a little more for me to help with then. I remember installing the rear Coupe glass, pumping the pedals endlessly while my dad bled the brakes, messing around with the odometer stem. I think I might have broken that. Still, it seemed like a bit of an endless project and I wasn't particularly adept at using wrenched or screwdrivers yet, and that made it a little hard for me to keep my interest at times. Or I would get frustrated from only being able to turn a nut one flat at a time, or from being awkwardly jammed under a car. I see that frustration from time to time in my four-year-old twins when they try to use my tools sometimes, but I can empathize and help them through their frustration.

One thing that I understood was that the car was Important. Because it was important to my dad, it became important to me. It was a cool thing that we could work on together and as I moved into my teen years it kept me around on weekends instead of ignoring my parents and going to the mall. I learned more important things, like how to set jack stands, lower a jack safely, and make sure the car is secure.

When his car was finished we started going to shows. My first big MG show was the 1995 Summer Party in Grand Rapids. That's when I really got the bug. I started picking out what kind of British car I wanted for myself. When you're 15 you're looking for your first car. My first car was not an MG. It was a 1982 Oldsmobile. It was not awesome, and it was not in awesome shape, but Dad taught me how to do bodywork and fix leaky valve covers and replace alternator belts, and the day I turned 16 I took that car out and couldn't have been happier. By 17 I had an MGB which was also not in awesome shape. By 20 that car was in awesome shape, with the help of my dad, and I moved on to my first MGA. It was a Coupe and was not- you guessed it- in awesome shape. That's the car that I drove to my first GT as an owner: GT-25 in Morgantown, WV. Eighteen years later the car still needs a paint job, but other than that it's in awesome shape. I think that's probably because my dad let me play out in the garage with him 35 years ago, and I plan to let my kids do the same thing.

~~Mark Z & Mark J Michalak