Rsamis' Weblog

Well this is my first foray into blogging. My initial impression is, it’s unnerving typing with all those stupid animated smiley faces looking at me.

I’ve had my TR7 for over a year and a half, so to tell the whole story I have to go back in time…

I first spotted the car in the fall of 2005 when it was sitting in my brother-in law’s yard. I’ll take a moment to tell you about my brother in law, because he figures heavily in the story. Roger is a heavy-duty mechanic, and a self-proclaimed redneck. He lives in a small town about an hour out of the city. His house is the last one on the street, just where the pavement gives way to gravel. His big front yard is a constantly changing parade of welding projects, dismantled pickup trucks, and cars that “friends” have dropped off for him to fix.

The TR7 was a curiosity to me when I saw it, so I asked him what the story was. He said it belonged to another guy named Roger (who lives RIGHT out of town) and it needed its clutch hydraulics fixed. Never thought much about it at the time, but circumstances brought me out there several times over the next few weeks (we were butchering a couple of steers in his garage - what else do rednecks do in the fall when they can’t get out hunting?) and the car actually, the _idea_ of a British sports car) started to grow on me.

Roger#1 said the car was in really good shape, other than the clutch problem and a shabby interior. I learned that Roger#2 had found a new love (an 80’s Corvette), and, having lost interest in his TR, was willing to sell it for a mere $300.

When I told my wife that I was seriously thinking about buying it, she, in a word, freaked. She immediately diagnosed a midlife crisis (I was 41 at the time) and I didn’t deny it. I did point out, however, that a $300 jalopy is a relatively harmless manifestation of said crisis. I “worked on her” for a few weeks, and although I never received her blessing, I got to a point where I was fairly confident she wouldn’t empty out our joint chequing account if I went ahead. So on a dark December night I gave Roger#2 a cheque and became the owner of a red 1976 TR7 coupe with clutch trouble.