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Chicagoland MG Club
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Results of Survey #2by Ray
Glorioso At the regularly scheduled Chicagoland MG Club Meeting of 21 June, 1999 a survey sheet was passed out to all present. Once again no count was made of the number of members present or of the number of survey sheets passed out but, 52 sheets were returned. Of those returned one was obviously counterfeit and was discarded, driver's licenses were not required until the late 1920's, and none of our members are over 100 years old. The results were again very interesting, two of those present could not get drivers licenses until next year but already had cars, and both of them MGs. Two people could get a license in 1949, one did and got a car. Most of us could get our license in 1966 and 1967,4 each year, while 1963, 1966 and 1973 were tied with 4 respondents getting their license. More first cars were purchased 1967 and 1968, 4 each year and in 1968 5 respondents got their first sports car. The year that more MGs were acquired was 1997, 4 again. I didn't remember that at one time cars came in colors like pink and white, or in metal colors like copper, silver; gold, bronze, or in euphemistic descriptions like citron yellow, sandglow, black tulip, blaze, butterscotch, or harvest gold. (One survey described Butterscotch as baby poop brown.) Yet most of us got a blue first car, a red first sports car, and most first MGs were / are red, with red as the second most popular color on our first cars, and green on our first sports cars as well as our first MGs. I thought that BRG (British racing green) would be the most popular first MG color but I was wrong. The questions concerning motorcycles was a throw away, one that I had not planned to tabulate or even read but the responses were strange enough to be of interest. 8 of us, or maybe of them, own motorcycles all of which have manual transmissions. Honda in the 70's made their inline 750-4 with an automatic transmission, making the question of manual or automatic valid. The fierce individualism of the motorcyclists showed, in the asides placed next to the question, one of which likened me to a certain body orifice. Further tabulation and examination of these results will be left to a cycle club somewhere. The composite respondent of "Survey Two" could get their driver's license on 16 May, 1965 but waited until 28 January, 1967. Their need to have a car did not manifest itself until 17 March, 1970. It is at this time that in 21.5 % of our driveways / garages a blue car appeared, 19.6%were red, 13.7% were green, 13.7% were white, brown, black, and other were each 7.8%, and 3.9% were yellow. Almost a year later (14 March, 1971), 33.3% of us added or replaced that first car with a red sports car, 13.7% made it a green one, 11.7% chose white, 9.8% got some other color, for 7.8% it was yellow and 7.8% chose blue, 5.80% got brown and 5.8% got black. We were satisfied with that sports car until the 29th of August 1983 at which time 27.4% of us got red MGs, 15.6% got green ones, 9.8% got white and another 9.8% got yellow, 7.8% got blue and 7.8% got black, 5.8% got other colors, and 3.9% got brown. (Note: The frequent references to "rust" AND some color were treated as that color only. No one referred to "rust" as the primary MG color and only one person gave the color of their first sports car as primer, which was treated as red. What conclusions can we draw from this survey? A) Motorcyclists have no sense of humor? B) The surveyist is a weird person? (This is probably not a question but a statement of fact.) C) Car Club members who respond to surveys favor red cars? D) An MG was most likely not our first car and not our first sports car? I don't know what else these numbers lead to but the raw data will be held until next month and will gladly be given to anyone who wishes to crunch and warp them differently. The above results are accurate to plus / minus 100 years. |
