When Ken Mita of Cheshire was barely old enough to shave, he was confronted with a gut-wrenching decision no 15-year-old should ever be forced to make. Austin-Healey, or MG? The year was 1980. Mita wasn’t yet old enough to drive (the DMV insisted on 16), “But in anticipation of getting my license,” Mita recounts, “we […]
When Ken Mita of Cheshire was barely old enough to shave, he was confronted with a gut-wrenching decision no 15-year-old should ever be forced to make.
Austin-Healey, or MG?
The year was 1980. Mita wasn’t yet old enough to drive (the DMV insisted on 16), “But in anticipation of getting my license,” Mita recounts, “we went shopping.”
Like so many potentially life-altering decisions, it came down to economics. Mita was a student at Choate in Wallingford. But unlike many of his classmates at the tony prep school, Mita wasn’t playing with Daddy’s Monopoly money — it was his own hard-earned cash from summer jobs doing painting, carpentry and more at properties his family owned.
“I had it narrowed down between this car” — a 1967 MGB Roadster — ”and a 1963 Austin-Healey 3000. The Austin-Healey was a cool car, had a little bit bigger engine — my dad didn’t really like that — but it was a few years older, and it was $750. So I bought this car.”
The MGB was $500. Sold.
Sometimes the value of a vehicle is measured not in dollars, but in memories — in Ken Mita’s case, a half-century of memories. Mita, 54, is a project manager with residential developer Hillcrest Homes LLC. He’s had his MG virtually his whole life, with no plans to get rid of it any time soon.
He drove the MG as soon as he got his license and all through high school. After college he started to do some work on the car with an eye toward an eventual full restoration of the vehicle. It had 85,000 miles when he bought it in 1980 and had over time become “temperamental, and a little sad.”
Over the years that work proceeded in fits and starts as life, family and career all conspired to push back the restoration. “The car actually spent three years in boxes, disassembled,” Mita says.
It wasn’t until 2002 that Mita by chance met a former Vietnamese boat person named Vu Nguyen who had an auto-restoration business on the side. Vu performed a full frame-off restoration of the car that took a full year.
Since then, “I haven’t really had to do anything with the car — it’s been great,” Mita says. He drives it year-round, almost always topless (the car, not Mita). “Even if it’s just around the block.”
