MG got it just right when they introduced the J2 Midget in 1932! Apart from being one of the best looking small sports cars around the J2 with its drop side doors, slab shaped petrol tank, centre lock wheels with a rear mounted spare plus a fold flat windscreen and optional aero screens set a style which MG continued to use right up to their 1955 TF 1500.

As well as being copied by other manufacturers the J2 established a market for an attractive, usable and affordable front engined sports car range that MG developed as far as the MGB which in the 1960s appealed to the same sort of people who had bought the J2 some thirty years previously.

The J2 also had a technically appealing overhead cam engine which not only looked good but gave lively performance – however if it did have a weakness it was its 2 bearing crankshaft which, if the engine was used regularly at its 5000 plus maximum rpm, could soon fail and require an expensive engine rebuild or replacement.

In my early motoring days J2s were often owned by young and impecunious drivers who would a) drive them quite hard and b) could not afford to get a new engine when they broke it (which they often did!)

However they soon found that they could get a perfectly useable replacement if they bought themselves a second hand side valve Ford engine! Not only was it inexpensive to buy, parts were cheap so it could be maintained but not only that – shock horror - it performed as well as the J2 engine and could easily be tuned to go a lot faster if you wanted so Ford engined J2s became an acceptable part of the old car world.

However as time went by and old cars become more fashionable the Ford engined cars began to be frowned on by the purists and it became the done thing to get yourself a new or at least refurbished overhead cam J2 engine with the result that before long you hardly ever came across a Ford engined J2, in fact this is the first one I have seen for ages!

Any way I can thoroughly recommend them and this one is well worth a look. Apart from anything else although it is not in concours condition it looks lovely, it feels like it is properly bolted together, the engine is sweet plus the J2 gearbox and transmission are in very good order. It also has new tyres and relined brakes so all in all it drives very nicely!

I think the best thing you can do is come and see it for yourself but we would respectively ask you to bear in mind that we regard the very attractive price as being firm.