One sunny Saturday evening in late May 1990 we decided to do a fuel consumption test on the Ginetta to see what mpg we could get from the car, it was supposed to be more than 40 which seemed like a great figure from an 18 year old vehicle. Was it attainable we wondered? She was very low on fuel anyway so we drove to a local garage and put exactly one gallon in a container and filled another container up, we then drove her around until she ran out. We put the one gallon in the fuel tank, zeroed the trip and again drove her till she ran out again, this time checking the trip........she registered 47! Elated, we filled her up from the second container and headed for a local pub for a bite to eat and a drink to celebrate. Afterwards driving home she began to misfire a little, we'd seen this before when the plugs got sooted up so we pulled over and dabbed the throttle a few times attempting to blow them clean. What happened instead was a huge whooshing sound as a jet of flames 4ft long shot out the back of the car! We piled out and retreated a safe distance away, Andrew quickly summed up the situation and reached back into the car for the fire extinguisher we carried with us, this is after all, a fibre glass body shell. The flames were quickly doused and gingerly we lifted the rear compartment to see if we had an engine left! At this point a car with two middle-aged couples in it came by, they stopped and stared in amazement with their mouths open at the cloud of rapidly dispersing black smoke around our vehicle. They were followed very quickly by a local police car who just happened along so they seized the opportunity and sped off without even asking if we were OK! The police were almost as helpful when they politely pointed to a road sign and said "If you were this side of that sign we could help you but you're now in Buckinghamshire not Bedfordshire, sorry mate". They did at least take our AA card and called in to headquarters to get a tow truck out to us. Then they buggered off too! To keep ourselves amused whilst waiting for said tow truck to turn up we poked about in the engine bay trying to find the cause of our little fire. It quickly became apparent what our problem had been. The line from the fuel tank into the carburetor was what was termed as an "interference fit", in other words "we just poke this end into the carburetor, don't hold it in with anything, but don't worry it doesn't come out......it's an interference fit." Yeah right. Well, that had come adrift, and when Andrew had dabbed the throttle earlier we weren't so much as clearing the plugs as spraying fuel all over them! At that point a fire was inevitable, we were just incredibly lucky that we carried a fire extinguisher or we would have had to stand back and watch the little G15 go up in flames. Anyway, we were finally towed home and retired to bed. The next morning was our first opportunity to have a good luck at the damage caused by our little mishap. Amazingly it turned out to be minor. The powder fire extinguisher had just about covered the whole interior of the car so I volunteered to clean it up. Made a mental note: next time I'm running from a burning vehicle remember to carefully shut the doors so the interior won't get messy! Andrew checked out the mechanicals and found some scorched and burnt cables that were replaceable, as was the fuel line. We discovered a hole in the line about halfway down and concluded that the fire had burnt it through and had become self- sustaining from the gravity fed fuel tank at the front of the car. Clever old fire! The worst casualty was the air filter; G15's usually came equipped with a pancake type filter that stifled the car. Most owners changed it, us included. After much searching we had fitted a Ramair filter from an Australian company, a wonderful filter that had completely changed the performance of the car. Unfortunately it was made from foam and so melted in the fire.....which meant we had to resort to the pancakes again as the Friday following the accident we were heading to Scotland for a two week camping trip with the Ginetta and we didn't have time to source another one. In fact, we've never found another one. The bodywork hadn't been touched as Andrew reacted so quickly with the extinguisher and we ended up with a wonderfully clean engine bay with no surplus oil or dirt in sight! And what about the so called "interference fit"? That got both loc-tited and loc-wired in place and won't ever be going anywhere else but to the carburetor ever again.