Your Projects: Widebody MG Midget

Forum member nocones has built a widebody MG Midget to—you guessed it—dodge cones. We caught up to him this week at the 2017 Tire Rack SCCA Solo Nationals and took a good walk-around video.

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I love this so much

Say hi to John for me!

Duly noted on the "warning" sticker...LOL

It was so awesome to (finally) see it in the flesh. Plus No Cones is definitely a good guy.

Look for a full story on the car in the magazine soon. (Shh, spoiler alert.)

God ! ! That little gem is just SO superior to any other E or D Modified that I've ever seen, attitude, performance, fit and finish and such a straight forward bullet proof drive line—PERFECTION ! Build it, drive it, have as much fun as possible ! !

In reply to David S. Wallens :

I still remember the first time I met nocones, and I believe it was his first event, also with this car - though still stock. I'm pretty sure he was still in high school. Damn, that makes me feel old...

Thanks for the video.  Response to the car has been awesome.  I enjoyed meeting all of the Dmod people and enjoyed talking to Dave while he shot pictures of the car.  

Results were mixed.  I had decent runs and managed 11th out of 19. My codriver struggled to keep it clean and ended up carrying several cones.  The car definitely has potential and with some tuning may have a trophy in it someday.  

My runs:

https://www.youtube.com/embed/AkJnGnjHGzk?rel=0

nocones said:

The car definitely has potential and with some tuning may have a trophy in it someday.  

If you get much quicker, you might need a little more gear so you won't have to run half the course on the rev limiter. 

David S. Wallens said:

Look for a full story on the car in the magazine soon. (Shh, spoiler alert.)

And well deserved it will be! 

I remember when I met nocones. I was codriving his Subaru with a German guy. I don't remember what nocones was driving, but it wasn't his car. And then later I bought his Miata. Funny how things work like that. 

Someone needs to post the video/picture of John getting hit in the head with a cone.

Hey, you're internet famous!

http://jalopnik.com/cone-hits-autocross-driver-back-at-solo-nationals-1803784968/amp

My codriver and the car didn't exactly mesh well. His driving style can best be described as enthusiastic.  The car really over responded to his input and many cones were killed and off courses occurred.  He never really figured it out.  As a result he had nearly 4 minutes of blooper real footage of cone clobering at nationals.  One of the cones bounced of the splitter and exacted it's revenge. It is a funny moment for sure.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/8Vr-fBFfXh8?rel=0

It's all over the internet.  I keep telling myself no press is bad press but nearly every place it turns up talks about how much of a handful and bad handling the car appears to be.  It really isn't bad handling but admittedly with the out of control driving in the video it does look evil.  Our bestest friends over a Jalopnik have it featured and of course in their fantastic journalism attribute the car build/ownership to him. I guess the car is infamous now.

http://jalopnik.com/cone-hits-autocross-driver-back-at-solo-nationals-1803784968

The thing that people need to remember with that driver is that in one single event, he spun a stock ND out about 5 times. He also has numerous FTD's, and is certainly capable of finishing very high at Nationals--really an all or nothing type of guy. 

Nothing to see here folks...Just Jalopnik upholding their GRM valued 'journalistic integrity' by basically just making up a random short blurb to go with the Facebook video/post, rather than...I don't know...Contacting the person directly to get even a bare minimum of details before sharing and commenting on it. 

I bet if you contacted them, you could get it updated to at least reflect the true owner/builder of that ill-handling death machine.  And if video of your Nationals runs ever makes its way to them, you'll get credit for 'taming' the (his?) beast.

Very cool car. I enjoyed seeing it in paddock and speaking wiht you guys. Wish I had seen it run.

Thanks to John speaking up in the comments, it looks like it's no longer being attributed as "his rotary-powered MG Midget" in the blurb, but now just "rotary-powered MG Midget"...Well, I guess something is better than nothing. LOL