Not so bad.
Here's where I stand. The head gasket was definitely blown. The oil pan had been taken off and was sitting in the front seat. There was some rust on the internal parts, as you can see from the pics on the first post. So I hired a retired guy who has a hangar around the corner. He rebuilds cars and airplanes, he has a Lotus and an MGBGT he is working on for other guys, along with a couple of experimental aircraft. I felt like I wanted some professional help to deal with the motor, he has the tools and skills and time, and we are not sure if the motor needs to come out yet or what. He started in the other day and took of the big end bearings and such, saw some surface rust that wiped right off, did not see anything that looks like a real problem in the bottom end. Next week he will take off the head. If the pistons are not rusted into place, then the cylinders can be honed with the engine in place, and all will be no big deal. If they are really bad and need to be bored, then the motor will have to come out, and then I might as well just rebuild it top to bottom. I am prepared for either contingency.
My neighbor Mike, who is a dynamite craftsman, said he had just unpickled a Gypsy Major that had not run since 1969, he just fired the thing up and changed the oil a couple of times, no worries. He thought I should have just thrown some marvel mystery oil into the cylinders and waited for the thing to free up and just run it, but since I KNEW it had a bad head gasket anyway, I thought it better to wait before trying to turn the engine over, in case the rust damages the bearings and rings.

The interior is a mess. Back in the Early Eighties, three different cats had littlers of kittens in the car. Not a good thing. All that Connelly leather upholstry ruined. The seats are all dried up and have animal created holes in them. The tonneau cover is salvageable with some stitching and cleaning. The interior panels are mostly okay, except those over the sills, which have curled up and seem unsalvageable. I checked out a complete interior from Morgan, $3750 plus MANY hours of installation. If I do that, I will farm it out. Upholstry is specialist work, I have had only limited success doing it myself. I may dye most of the existing interior and just replace the seats. We will see about that later.

The car was originally white, but was given a pretty awful yellow paint job for the movie. Good enough for picture, as they say in the film business, but no so great in the real world. Low quality paint, and overspray on EVERYTHING, including the dashboard. Terrible. Some paint flaked off in a few spots with just the car wash sprayer. I have compounded a few spots, and it cleaned up okay, though. All the spots and animal footprints and stuff compounded out, maybe the existing paint job can be matched with touch-up paint and lived with for a few years. Repainting the car PROPERLY will be a big job, as it really will need the yellow paint job stripped off. Which really means stripping the car down to bare metal. Which really means pretty complete dissasembly. Maybe somewhere down the road.

The chrome is not bad. The bumpers have been pushed in a bit, and one needs straightening, but I polished up some test spots, and everything came up as presentable...not pitted, not perfect, presentable.

The woodwork that makes up the body seems pretty good. You know the car is built of wood, with metal panels on the outside? Really. The doors open and close properly, that tells a lot about the condition of the woodwork. I have some experience dealing with that kind of thing with a 52MGTD, beleive me, there are good reasons they don't make cars out of wood anymore.

All the hydraulics need doing. Clutch and brakes.

Engine is the first thing to deal with. Once the car is running, everything else will look much easier. A dead car that does not run is psycologically not such a great thing.