Me and my cars.

[Jon]

My name is Jon Evans and I live near Cambridge. I am not the Jon Evans who is the Midas Owners Club Membership Secretary – we just share a very common name.

I built my first Midas, a Mk3 Gold, in 1989 from a 45 hour kit direct from the Corby factory. I had been to look at the still current Bronze but succumbed to Harold’s expert salesmanship and finished up with a Gold. That car was on the road for nine of the fifteen years that I had it, covering a total of eighty thousand miles before it was rendered uneconomical to repair after a 360 degree roll into a field.
My fault unfortunately. If the field hadn’t been freshly ploughed it would probably have been a spin and a bit of off-roading, but it was so sticky it just flipped. Apart from a cut to my right arm from the broken door glass, I was uninjured.

I replaced it with a 1985 Bronze which did four thousand miles before the crankshaft pulley fell off, which led to some overheating and a blown head gasket. It has sat in the garage for the last three years waiting for the engine from my first car, which had just been totally reconditioned.

In the mean time, I had a second Gold which covered eleven thousand miles before that was also rendered beyond economic repair, this time by a blind taxi driver. I hit his Vectra Estate square on in the side at about 30mph after he pulled out of a side turn, and apart from being winded by the seat belt, was again uninjured.

My Bronze was just going to have a quick engine swap, but once I’d dropped the front sub-frame it became evident that just about every suspension bush, engine mount and subframe mount were well past their best, so its been having a full front end rebuild. I’m hoping to have it back on the road within the next few months. My original Midas Ridgard seats live on in the Bronze, freshly recovered by Bob Ridgard himself, as does the steering wheel, door trims, engine and gearbox, four-pot callipers and vented disks, plus a few bits and pieces from my second Gold. Just writing this has got me all enthusiastic again.

I also suffer from what is obviously a common complaint amongst Midas owners, i.e. not enough time to fiddle with the Midas, due to the usual domestic/work demands, plus having too many cars. I have a Triumph Spitfire which has been in regular use for most of the last twenty-six years, and which is desperately overdue for some attention, plus an AC 3000ME which, at the moment, only needs routine maintenance as it is very low mileage and in excellent nick. Interestingly, there is a common theme amongst these cars; they all have Triumph rear lights. The AC is just like a kit car, despite being fully Type Approved. AC purists get a bit tetchy when you suggest this. It has the same Ford interior door handles as my Midas, plus various other bits from Jaguar and Triumph. AC could certainly have learned some lessons from Midas about how to use GRP.