Edward grew up around cars that demanded something of you. Not speed. Attention. His grandfather favored pre war Daimlers and Rolls Royces, the kind of cars that lived in garages and asked to be understood before they were ever driven. His father carried that sensibility forward into the 1960s. Different shapes, same expectation. These were cars that didn’t explain themselves. You learned them slowly, usually by watching first. A Daimler 15 sat in the family garage like furniture you weren’t supposed to touch.
“So I’d always wanted classic cars from a very young age,” Edward says, and it doesn’t land as nostalgia. It sounds closer to inevitability. When he was old enough to drive, his friends wanted modern Polos. Easy cars. Safe cars. Cars designed to smooth over mistakes and keep things quiet. Edward wanted something simpler. When his dad found a 1972 MGB finished in orange, he knew immediately. “As soon as I looked at it, it was the right spec. I really like the orange. It felt very 70s.”
The MGB has never been an aggressive object. By the early 1970s it was already behind the curve technically, still riding on leaf springs in the rear and offering very little separation between the driver and whatever decision he was about to make. No ABS. No traction control. No electronic mediation. British Leyland never intended it to be precious or intimidating. It was built to be approachable, to be driven every day, to be understood rather than mastered.
When Edward turned up in it, his friends laughed. “They thought it was just an old bit of tat and not really worth having,” he says. Edward disagreed, but without any real defensiveness. That same ease carries through the car itself. Driving it teaches you things modern cars tend to hide. “It teaches you how to drive properly,” he explains. “You’ve got a proper raw driving experience.” Weight transfer becomes obvious. Braking distances feel honest. Errors show up early. You feel what the chassis is doing and what the tires are asking for, not through drama, but through clarity.
At first, he wanted to keep it original. Period wheels. Period touches. Preservation felt like respect. But time changes perspective, especially when you start going to shows and seeing modified classics done with restraint and thought. Cars that felt personal without being loud. “I didn’t want to ruin the car,” Edward says. “But I thought it could have some improvements.” The changes that followed reflect that same attitude. Nothing radical. Nothing performative. Just small corrections made carefully.
The MGB always sat too high. Practical, perhaps, but without... conviction. He lowered it. Then realized that off the shelf solutions only went so far. So he went further. Cutting springs. Having top hats machined. Welding assemblies together until the stance finally made sense at three inches lower than standard. Those parts are still on the car years later, still doing their job. It sits better now, not because it is trying to make a statement, but because it looks comfortable with itself.
The wheels followed. Japanese SSR Mk III wheels from the late 1970s. Rare in the UK and difficult to find in the right size. Edward had seen them on another MGB years earlier and hadn’t been able to shake the image. Eventually, not through obsession but timing, they surfaced. A Facebook Marketplace link from his father one Saturday morning. Six hundred pounds became five. A quick drive to Essex and they were his. Fifteen inches. Not perfect offset by modern standards, but right for the period, and right for the car.
One of the most telling modification is also the smallest. A gear knob made from a tap handle, bought online late one night for four pounds. “I thought I was going to hate it,” Edward admits. “But it’s actually amazing how comfortable it feels.” It doesn’t look especially ergonomic. It doesn’t draw attention to itself. It just works. That detail explains the whole approach. Modification not as spectacle, but as familiarity. Making the car feel welcoming. Something you want to spend time with.
By fifteen, Edward was already working in classic restoration workshops. By nineteen, he’s still there, learning how cars were built, why they were built that way, and when it makes sense to leave something alone. He talks about the future without bravado. His own workshop, eventually. Restoration and modification sharing the same space. Cars that feel cared for, not corrected.
“I really do think it expresses my style,” he says. It does. The car is open in the same way he is. Approachable. Honest. The kind of thing that invites conversation rather than ending it. The sort of car you ask about at a petrol station, or lean against while talking longer than you meant to.
Looking out the window and seeing the MGB sitting on the drive still matters. “It’s a great feeling,” Edward says.
It should be. The car feels like him.
