Sounds like they required your attention.
When I met my then future brother-in-law in 1960, he took me for a ride in his MG. He was immediately all right with me. Still is.
Yup, she said she had to carry a case of oil in the trunk of her twin cam A just to make a round trip to the Jersey shore and back to Lebanon. She rued the day she traded her standard A for the twin cam. As I recall, a twin cam MGA sold on Barrett-Jackson for over $100K recently.