After keeping an eye out for a good deal for a few years, I found and bought one of these roadsters:

TR3

My dad had one up until I was about 10 years old, and he always regretted selling it, for obvious reasons: it’s really just a beautiful car, and incredibly fun to drive. It won’t outrun anything modern, but in its day it really stood apart from its peers (MGs, Austin Healeys, etc) with the next step up being far more expensive (Jaguar XKs, Corvettes, etc). And when it comes to handling, it’s hard to beat.

This particular TR3 is pretty much original or stock across the board: one nice change is the cylinders are slightly larger than normal, giving it another couple hundred CCs of displacement. The paint’s in pretty good shape, and after driving it ~800 miles in one day, it seems not to have any serious problems.

But it does have some problems.

The cooling system is kind of a mess: it overheated twice the first month, in serious (i.e. spewing-out-all-the-coolant) ways, and closer inspection showed 1) the dashboard thermometer was way off, 2) the thermostat might be stuck or the housing compromised, and 3) the radiator had a few slow leaks. Note that some or all of these issues could have actually started the first time it overheated, which might have been due to old/low fluids and the excessive July heat: at this point it’s hard to tell.

Another issue is the lack of side curtains (an old term for roadster windows that fasten into place) and the valve that lets the coolant flow into the heating system was shut off and jammed.