Late last week, while the Jalopnik Brain Trust (me, David, Raph, Rory, and a smoothly-sanded plank of pine) were discussing why MGB prices never seem to get that high, I decided to hop onto Craigslist to see just what MGBs were actually going for. I only found one ad, and I have to say, I was deeply and powerfully impressed by just how shitty the ad’s pictures were. Now you get to see them, too!

The ad has since been deleted — perhaps the car was sold, perhaps it’s gone because of shame, perhaps Craig Himself arose from his gilded cage and smote the ad. We may never know.

What we do know are the pictures of this 1978 MGB looked like this:

This is a remarkably useless picture, as most of it is just showing the one thing you actually do know about the car: it’s for sale.

And then there’s this almost useful shot of the engine, where you can at least see that the thing isn’t exactly rich with belts, but the SU carb still seems to be there.

I guess this shot is good to confirm the very suspect mileage? I guess?

There’s not a single overall picture of the car. All the photos are turned 90 degrees counter-clockwise, they’re all showing shots that are simultaneously too close up to be useful and yet, somehow, not close up enough.

They’re really incredible in how useless they are. It’s quite an achievement, and I felt this Craigslist MGB-vendor deserved some notice for their remarkable commitment to crappy photography.

Of course, there’s still the question of MGB prices and sales, which I now see range from a low of about $11,000 up to $30,000, which is much more than I’ve seen for sale around.

But, then again, I think I’ve really only seen basket cases, that’s at the low end of the range but looks fantastic.

Why don’t I see more MGBs around? They seem like really charming collector cars, and while, yeah, they suffer from all the usual British car reliability issues, they at least were imported in decent numbers to America, and I don’t think keeping one going would prove that expensive or difficult.

They seem like fun little roadsters with power levels low enough that nobody would expect you to be able to drive it all that well or aggressively, so it’s ideal for someone who wants some zero-pressure or pretentious fun.

Look! Here’s a for only $6,600! Are we forgetting there areMGBs out there? If so, consider this a reminder!