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Hemmings Sports & Exotic Car's Latest Project

Here at Hemmings, our projects are all homegrown and very dependent upon the editors' cash flow. We don't accept free goods from our advertisers, meaning that all the stories you read in our publications are paid for by our writers. We've all got houses and kids and the other expenses of middle class America, and it's tough to impose upon our editors' very real day-to-day expenses.

But we want to do more tech stories because we know you like to read them. We wracked our brains coming up with a solution that would allow us to provide good, meaningful tech stories, as well as not completely selling ourselves out for free parts.

The solution came in the form of a local non-profit organization here in Vermont. Good News Garage (GNG) is an affiliate of Lutheran Social Services of New England, and creates economic opportunity by providing affordable and reliable transportation options to people in need. Since 1996 GNG has provided safe and reliable cars to over 2,000 individuals and families in need of transportation to accept a job, maintain a job, or have access to employment training. Good News Garage also has offices in NH, MA and CT.

GNG gets vehicle donations from people like you, but unlike the vast majority of car donation programs, GNG selects the best of those cars and repairs them with new timing belts, hoses, tires and brakes, and then turns them over to low-income families and individuals. GNG has a great little shop in Burlington, VT, with lifts and trained technicians who can diagnose whether a car is reliable enough to be turned over to a family or individual in need. GNG gets donations of all kinds, and if a car, truck or van is too old or not appropriate for a low-income family's daily transportation needs, the car goes to the auction to offset the cost of running their facilities and repairing the cars.

That's where we came in. A month ago, a man from Fitchburg, Massachusetts generously donated this 1980 MGB that had been sitting for a few years. Instead of hauling the car up to Burlington, the flatbed made a special stop the day before Thanksgiving and dropped the car off at our offices. Over the next year, we'll embark on a "resto-mod" project to get the car up and running, and looking good. When we're done, we're going to put it in Hemmings Motor News and accept sealed bids for it. The highest bidder's check will go directly to Good News Garage. GNG's only cost so far has been the towing fee from Fitchburg to our office, and if the car had gone to auction, it likely would have brought less than $1,000. The organization figures that for every $1,000 we generate, they can get a family back on wheels, in a reliable, safe automobile.

The winning bidder will get a nifty sports car with the best restoration parts available, and a few performance mods thrown in, as well as some tax deduction for any amount that they bid over the actual value of the car. We get some great tech stories to share, and the knowledge that, together, we're helping an organization that puts hard-working families back on the road to financial well-being.

You can check up on our progress through monthly updates in Hemmings Sports & Exotic Car, or you can see some of the work on our web log at http://blog.hemmings.com/index.php/category/hemmings-editors/good-news-garage/.

If you have a car that you think would be good for a family in need and you wish to donate to Good News Garage, call them toll-free at 877-448-3288, or donate your car online right now at www.goodnewsgarge.org. All vehicle donations are tax deductible.

MG Project Updates