Driving a 1970 MGB in High School Taught Me Everything I Needed to Know About Driving [OPINION]

Car safety and drivers these days are far from great. There are more inattentive drivers than ever staring at their cellphones either in the palm of their hand or suction-cupped to the windshield. People rely on blind-spot monitors to change lanes rather than using their eyes and set their adaptive cruise control to follow the car in front like they’re bump-drafting at Daytona. Drivers of old cars managed to get where they were going without running into everything in sight, so why can’t we?

With the way cars are made these days, most of these terribly unsafe habits don’t actually result in injury very often. Modern safety features like multiple airbags, pre-tensioning seatbelts, crumple zones, safety glass, ABS, stability control and even basic things like tire and suspension technology all contribute towards making cars harder to crash and even harder to hurt yourself while crashing.  

However, all of these advancements in cars also make it much easier to hop into your new Toyota Sienna with just as much horsepower as a 1970 Ferrari 348 and blast down the freeway and caravan your entire family into a wall when you have to make an emergency lane-change. Most people think of old sports cars as just some cool toys painted bright colors, but they can also be learning tools to improve your driving skill, which will also make our roads a little safer.

The bright yellow 1970 MGB I drove in high school came out right around the peak of automotive styling according to some people. That’s now what I’m going to talk about though. This car was the perfect learning toy and friend for a budding car enthusiast who was also learning how to drive something with four wheels on the street.

“Big-Bird” as I named the MGB, had absolutely none of the modern safety features mentioned previously. It had lap-belts and a giant chrome ashtray cover just in front of the shifter. I didn’t smoke in high school, but that detail explains the lack of emphasis on safety refinement from MG 50 years ago.  

There was a four-speed manual transmission, a clutch pedal, maybe 100 horsepower on the best of days, skinny tires, no power steering and my friend almost drove his Ford Expedition completely over the top of the front end while backing out of a parking spot once. This was very much an analog car that would not be kind to you if you don’t know what you’re doing.  

In order to drive the MGB year-round in Wisconsin, you really have to pay attention to what you’re doing with the car. You can’t just hop into it in the morning and barrel out into the snow without warming it up or checking things, and you certainly can’t drive on wet or snowy pavement as if it were dry. I supposed you could, but you probably won’t last very long.

If everyone were to drive something like that little yellow bird while learning how to drive, they’d be forced to develop good driving habits like paying attention to other drivers, understanding how to drive in inclement weather and doing whatever it takes to avoid a crash. As many of you know, it’s very difficult to drive a manual car while texting or doing anything with your phone.  

I know many of you think I’m batshit crazy right now because I’m suggesting an inherently unsafe car to solve a problem of safety, and that concern is valid. There will be some casualties in the beginning years, but there are always problems in the teething years. Maybe this will lead to less cars on the road overall because people will realize they can’t actually operate a vehicle and should stay off the road, leading to less traffic, less pollution and hopefully less road construction.  

An added bonus is that there will be a bunch of rad looking cars on the road again to break-up the gray scale sea of crossovers out there.