They’re small, they’re colourful, they’re classically British, and if you happened to see them on their drive through the Rainy River District earlier this week, they’re cars that have travelled hundreds of thousands of kilometres all over the world.
A quintet of brightly coloured British MGB GT sportscars owned and driven by members of several MG Car Clubs in Australia rolled through Fort Frances and the Rainy River District yesterday, Monday, July 15, 2024. After being spotted during a brief stop in the Safeway parking lot, the Times managed to speak with the couple behind the wheel of a wine-red car, an MGB GT nicknamed “Shiraz” to learn more about their cars, their purpose, and their experiences.
The MGB is a two-door sportscar manufactured from 1962 until 1980 by the MG Car Company during its time as a division of the British Motor Corporation (later British Leyland). The MGB GT was introduced in 1965 as a fixed-roof model with a few other improvements over the standard model. The small, rear-wheel-drive cars are made to fit four people, though its difficult to imagine anyone sitting comfortably in the second row, making them an odd choice for cross-continental trips. Nevertheless, this small collection of dedicated MG enthusiasts, including Mike and Kay Herlihy, have driven their MGB’s across most of the continents on the planet, and were in the middle of a trip across the country when they pulled into the Safeway parking lot.
“So at the moment, we’re doing a road trip in Canada,” Mike explained.
“Now, this is an extension of a number of road trips that we’ve done. This car, in 2015, we shipped it to Chile and then drove to Ushuaia, [Argentina] the tip of South America, and then drove it up to Alaska. Then in 2017… we shipped the cars from Melbourne [Australia] to Bangkok [Thailand], and that’s when we did the Silk Road trip.”
The Silk Road trip brought the Herlihy’s, along with six other cars, from Bangkok through more than a dozen countries all the way to Abingdon-on-Thames, Oxfordshire, England, where the MG Motor Company once had the factory that produced the original MGB line, and where the international MG Car Club was founded. The crew has also completed several other long-distance trips, including from Capetown, South Africa to Cairo, Egypt in 2012. The trips all originally started with a friend of the Herlihy’s, himself an MG collector and enthusiast, who organized the first trip, and as they completed that first epic journey, Mike and Kay said the travel bug had them firmly in its grasp.
“We’ve got a friend who was the instigator of the Pan American trip, through South America, Central America and the States, and he had previously done the Silk Road trip,” Kay explained.
“He was the one who started us. We went on the first trip with him, and he came all the way up to Alaska with us. And we’re still friends with him.”
“That was the first trip,” Mike continued.
“When we came back, we caught a ferry from Skagway [Alaska] to Bellingham [Washington], and then back to Vancouver. Then we drove from there back to L.A., and on the way we were just by ourselves at that stage, I actually said to Kay, ‘I’m not done.’”
The MGB is a smaller car, but owing to the fact that it was produced in the 60’s and 70’s, Mike said it’s also a very easy car to keep running during their travels. None of the individuals making the trips are qualified mechanics, he said, but they know their cars well, and because they don’t have to deal with any advanced technologies like computers or sensors onboard, they can make roadside repairs easily enough. They also occasionally get maintenance checkups done during their trips, as they are scheduled to do when they reach Winnipeg sometime this week.
While not all cars have made all the group’s trips, the five who are currently making their way through the Great White North are friends who have travelled a hundred thousand kilometres together, enjoying themselves, the drives, and the countries they visit along the way.
“It’s just something that we really enjoyed, you know?” Mike said.
“We don’t do lots and lots of miles every day, but we do enough to sort of keep us ticking over. We go and see as many sites as we can, and scenery. We’ve seen icebergs, we’ve seen whales, we’ve seen moose and bear. We try to see everything we can, and we make sure that we tick off all the culinary delights of a country, so we’ve done poutine, Beavertails, butter tarts.”
Seeing the sights and tasting the tastes rate high on many people’s to-do lists when travelling through a new country, but what Mike and Kay said is the most special to them as they circumnavigate the globe in their little car is the memories they make with the people whose heads inevitably turn when the quintet of classic cars drive by.
“We’ve seen lots of sights, we’ve got photographs of the car in front of scenery in Thailand and we’ve got the Grand Canyon and Niagara Falls, but really, the memories we take back is meeting people,” Mike said.
“We experience different lifestyles, different people, and we learn about people. But one of the things we’ve discovered from all the travels, and we do some talks and I always finish up our talk up by saying that of all the places in the world that we’ve been and seen, we’ve discovered that most people in the world are good people, and that’s something really lovely to take home.”
