(Ralph Zbarsky is a club member living in Vancouver, British Columbia.)

My experience with M.G.’s began in the late 60s, when a friend bought a used TD. It was red with a white top and standard equipment seemed to be a pretty girl in the passenger seat.
One day I stumbled across a twin cam MGA. It was already in reasonable shape, with a straight frame, excellent body and re-upholstered interior. The MGA seemed to be the perfect foundation for a vintage race car – not too old, not too new. A sharp dresser and fast enough for my vintage body. A restoration thus took place.
As any M.G.er knows, a network of similar M.G.ers soon gets established. By jungle grapevine I learned of an old Indy race car that had been located for sale in Texas. Further investigation revealed the car to be one of the M.G. Liquid Suspension Specials, likely the #53 car driven in the 1964 race!
The history of the “M.G.” involvement with Indy Racing is quite interesting. Usually, if you mention M.G. and the Indy 500 in the same sentence, people think you’ve been into the methanol too much. The M.G. involvement at Indianapolis was not a factory effort but the evolution of a project started by Kjell Qvale, who owned British Motor Car Distributors in San Francisco.
The distributorship, started after World War II, was extremely successful. Qvale established his own competition department headed by Joe Huffaker. The success of their efforts translated very well into car sales. The idea behind the “liquid suspension” was to highlight the performance of the M.G. 1100 hydrolastic suspension system. This was the first time a stock production suspension was used on an Indy car.
By 1964, Huffaker already had established a reputation as a race car constructor. He had designed and built BMC powered formula juniors and the Genie rear-engined sports car. Racing success in these venues would be insignificant compared to the famous Indianapolis 500, so Qvale and Huffaker now focused their efforts on Indy cars.
The chassis design for 1964 followed closely an underdeveloped Aston Martin powered 1963 design driven by Pedro Rodriguez. In 1964 they produced 3 cars, now powered by 252 cu. in. 4-cylinder Offys driving into a 2-speed Halibrand Transaxle. A proven combination.
The cars featured a lightweight chrome-moly tubular chassis with a fiberglass body. The advantage of the hydrolastic suspension units was that, in addition to being mounted