The MGA With An Attitude
MGA Guru Is GOING MOBILE
47th MGs On The Rocks, Street, MD - (September 26, 2026)
7-am breakfast appointment at Village Green Family Restaurant in York, Pennsylvania. We accidentally showed up half hour early, but the place was open, so we strolled in to order, getting a little head start. Others were soon filling the chairs. Most of these folks were friends of Darrell's Garage, but Darrell would not be here today.
Out to the car park at 8-am, half a dozen LBC on hand, Not too cold, but rain in the forecast may have scared off a few. In past years we commonly had 12 to 20 cars for this event. Keep these cars in mind, as they will represent about 10% of the vehicles to be presented on the show field later today.
Crawl out of York, PA by the side streets and follow some back back roads. 40 miles south, across the state line to Rocks State Park in Street, Delaware. Here for the 47th annual MGs On The Rocks car show, presented by MGs of Baltimore car club. This is touted as the longest continuously running car show in North America.
Most cars arrived by 10-am, good time to take pictures. Up front are the Premier Class cars, which have won Best In Class in prior years. And one car for sale,a rubber bumper MGB. If this gets sold in the next two weeks, he intends to buy an Austin Healey3000 (that will appear in later pictures below).
There were only about 60 cars on the field today (likely due to inclement weather forecast). Broken into at lest a dozen display and judging classes, some classes will have only a hand full of cars. At least the MG T-types are showing TC, TD, and TF models. Midgets are split by pre and post 1974 chrome or rubber bumpers.
MGA, four shown here early, two more to join us later. Lots of MGB in four classes, pre-emissions chrome '62-'67, post-emissions chrome '68-'74, rubber bumpers '74-1/2 to '80, MGB-GT (all years), and V8s (all conversions I think).
Rubber bumper MGBs were over-represented, at least nine of them.
Also an abundance of MGB-GT, at least seven (maybe related to the inclement weather).
Pretty sure there was a second MGB V8 some where, as they had their own class. "Other British" cars included two Rolls Royce, one Land Rover, and the Lotus Elan hiding in between.
the first Triumph must be a rare "Super 6", followed by two TR8 and two TR7.
Two Spitfire, one gloss black with chrome, one hide in the dark flat black with rubber bumpers, and two TR6.
The only Austin Healey on the field, a late model 3000 with roll-up windows. I think this one took best of show, and the guy selling his MGB wants to buy this car. Three Jaguar, all E-Type, the first early model in racing guise, the second with all the street trim, and then a 2+2 Coupe (very nice).
One casualty today as this MGA Coupe had dead screenwipers, stopped in mid stroke ten minutes before arrival. Switch key on for circuit testing, power, ground, and switch to ground control wire all working, and the fuse was still good. But the motor got hot enough to burn your hand, so I disconnected the fuse right away. All electrical seems to be okay, but it was mechanically locked up in mid stroke. Possibly a worn out carbon brush broken and jammed up the armature. The fault is inside the motor and gearbox assembly, so it will have to come out for repair, which is two hours of skinned knuckles job. For now we disconnected the power wire from the motor and taped it up to avoid ground shorting, and reinstalled the fuse so other electrical things will work. Remove wiper arms and Rain-X the glass before it heads home in the rain.
As clouds and mist turned into light drizzle, tops were up, tonneau covers on, and a few car covers. We mostly held up for awards presentations.
There were food vendors, and the Sailor Girls bake sale under the shelter roof.
Not to miss the parts vendors, and the concession selling miniature model cars was big hit.
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