The message
from The Natural Philosopher contains these words:

Indeed. We use to think MG Midgets were marvellous cars.

That surely would depend where in your car sequence they came. :-) Both
of mine came after better cars. The second was a stop gap between a
Lotus Elan Sprint and a Fiat X 1-9. They all had one thing in common - a
rust problem - but if my memory is to be trusted of the 3 only the Lotus
would be able to do much more than hold its own against the typical
modern shopping trolley most of which had at least comparable
acceleration times to the Fiat and were much better than the Spridget.

My wifes ex-car..Fiat Punto - out performed a Midget in *every* respect.

So will almost any modern car if you accept the limitations of front
wheel drive.

FWIW Donald Healey used to say you needed a power to weight ratio of 100
bhp per ton (gave 0 - 60 times in the order of 10 seconds) for a proper
sports car. The Spridget like most of the Healeys before the A/H 3000
(including the 100/4), failed in that respect.

--
Roger Chapman