My first TR was a white 1961 TR3 convertible, with a hardtop. I was in high school then and had to be part of the “Sports Car Clique”. Most, if not all of this “Clique” drove MG’s, and except for a TR4, mine was the only TR3. As a result I took a lot of heat about my car, including the time some of my friends lifted it off the ground and spun it around, with me in it.
In the summer of 1970 I promised my wife to be to meet her in Boulder, Colorado. The day before leaving the clutch cable broke but I got it “jerry-rigged” and fixed for the trip from New Jersey to California. With the top down I started off, lost some bills as they flew away in a toll booth ’round Chicago and some how made a wrong turn on an I-80 cloverleaf which headed me South instead of West. About 100 miles into this wrong way direction I encountered a “Freeway Ends in 100 feet sign”. “Wait a minute,” I thought “doesn’t 80 go all the way to California?” As I exited the freeway some cowboys informed me with a laugh that I’d been going the wrong way. Undaunted I turned around heading for my July 4th promised arrival date in Boulder, Colorado. Having lost some bills at the Chicago tolls I was strapped for cash, so I removed the passenger seat and slept on the floor of my TR3. But, I made it to Boulder by July 4th, and returned to New Jersey at the end of that summer.
I drove this car from 1965 until 1976 when my father “totaled” it, or so I thought. The car sat on cinder blocks for 6 years until I encouraged my father to “get over it” and sell it. A guy from Long Island bought it for $400. That day I found out that the car could have been restored! Too late! For the next 20 years I searched for a replacement, finally finding a 1959 burgundy colored TR3 in central New Jersey. I told the owner that if he could drive it the 60 miles north to my house I’d buy it. He did and I bought it. Supposedly the car was used in a XXX film; I have yet to see the film, nor do I know the name of it.