both in coaxing it to change direction and encouraging it to build revs. By 3500rpm even in the low gears it doesn’t want to know any more, and 4000 is positively painful. But, with the overdrive engaged, that’s OK because by then you’re doing 100 mph.

In wet corners and roundabouts it’s much more entertaining than the sorted car, in the nervous laughter sort of way – stimulating, but not an experience you’d care to repeat too often.

Although nobody would claim even the sorted car qualifies as nimble, it does respond well to a flick of the wrists. As standard, the C has to be gently wrested from its chosen line. In tight corners, especially if it’s wet, you turn in and it wants to go straight on, so you turn in some more and try some power. It goes straight on for a bit more, then finally the tail comes out to balance up the under steer – so slowly the steering’s up to catching it. It’s rather like driving a canal boat for the first time, with all the attendant unnerving delay.

There’s not as much urge, either. But if a standard C isn’t torquey, it is smooth: "The thing I love about my GT," says Roger Vardy-Smith, who owns The Golden Cross at Ardens Grafton which hosts weekly car club meetings, "is I can come up the hill to my pub – a 1 in 5 – in overdrive top. I just knock the overdrive out to get around the corner half-way up."

JPEG. Picture of a red MGC sportsd car as the sun sets

But the most compelling argument for a C over a B is this: there’s not much to choose between them on price right now:

We insured this car, one of the best Cs in the country and certainly one of the best-sorted, for £15,000. A similarly good big Healey might be £10,000 more. Go to auction and you can pick up a C GT for just a few thousand – half Healey money – and sort it for £1,000 more.

This happy state of affairs surely cannot last long. - Paul Hardiman