MG TF 1955

Description:

Description from The Vendor:

Whilst staying in California with our good friends Peter & Valerie Kjellberg I spotted a car covered in their drive in Rolling Hills, LA. It was the MG TF. I loved it & bought it from him. With the help of Peter I had it shipped to Le Havre in France where my wife & I picked it up & towed it back to UK. It created a lot of interest on the way home. One man even followed us into the drive of our house.

I was keen to restore it but didn’t have much space to work on it. Then I had serious mobility problems. 

When Peter & Valerie visited us this year in June 2022 Peter persuaded me to part with it knowing I could never  restore it myself. I am very reluctantly parting with it.

I love that car!

Description from The Former Vendor:

To whom it may concern: I am Peter Kjellberg, former owner of an automobile service center in Harbor City, California.

My company was started by me and a partner in the early eighties as a restoration shop for late fifties American cars, although as we were getting busier with our business we ended up doing some European and English cars too. 

Our business flourished and we had several mechanics come over from Sweden to help us with the restoration and repair of older cars. There were even articles about our shop in a Swedish Hot Rod enthusiast magazine. 

My partner had other plans and sold his share of the business back to me and he went back to Sweden to start a different business over there. My business model started to change as I got to know a lot of local people in the area and therefore I started to change from restoration work into a service center for Volvo and SAAB vehicles.

As the shop got busier, I needed to move to larger facilities and invest in a lot of new equipment and specialty tools to be able to keep up with newer cars, although my passion is still with classic cars and my own dream car from a little kid was the 1959 Cadillac convertible. I bought my 59 Cadillac from an insurance company as a total loss vehicle due to engine fire back in 1981 and then performed a total restoration of this car.

Being involved with classic cars I was asked by a local car show to help judging cars and from there I was introduced to a lot of people in the classic car world and was asked to be a judge in several Concours De Elegance shows in Southern California.

One of my customers asked me to work on one of his older cars and also start to look over his MG TF. My customer had owned the MG for over 20 years and was in need of a total restoration. We did a lot of work on his 1959 Mercedes 190 SL and as it was getting close to finished my customer had some unfortunate business issues and he could not afford to pay for the work on the Mercedes so we settled by taking the MG TF as part payment for the bill.

The MG was going to be a project car for me, but sat for a time in my driveway covered up until John And Elaine Wheatcroft came over to visit us in Rolling Hills Estates and John fell in love with the classic lines of the MG TF. A deal was made and I assisted John in shipping the car to Europe.

Hopefully this will help to establish a little history of this once beautiful car.

Auctioneer’s notes:

This car was imported from Califinonia, U.S. (See import document appendix 1). The car is fitted with wire wheels and all the extra bits are included e.g. hood and frame and also the engine is free and not siezed. The car has no rust and is very solid, this will be a fun restoration project for someone.