A Classic MG Won His Heart in 1955

Glenn Storek, 83, a retired architect/developer living in San Rafael, Calif., on his 1955 MG TF 1500, as told to A.J. Baime.

When I was growing up in San Francisco, my best friend Roger Freeburg and I both loved cars. When we found out there were going to be races in Golden Gate Park, we went two years in a row. These sports-car races in the early 1950s were among the first in California, attracting tens of thousands. We saw drivers who later became icons, like Phil Hill [later, the 1961 Formula One World Champion] and Ken Miles [portrayed by Christian Bale in the 2019 movie "Ford v Ferrari"]. More important, we saw MGs and Jaguars.

These MGs and Jaguars are considered by many to be the first postwar sports cars ever in the United States. The Detroit guys saw these and started building sports cars, notably, the Corvette, which debuted in 1953. And then the flood of Porsches, Alfa Romeos and Austin-Healeys came. But I particularly loved the MGs.