The initials MG are as famous as practically any in the classic motoring world, especially in the UK and USA. Known primarily for its sports cars, MG also produced a wide range of saloons and coupés, all with a sporting bent, though many were just badge-engineered versions of cooking saloons, especially when under BMC and British Leyland ownership.
The MG Car Company grew out of Morris Garages in Oxford back in the 1920’s with the company being incorporated in July 1930 before going through a series of ownership changes in the ensuing decades and is now in Chinese hands producing characterless modern boxes, with little or no hint of the marque’s sporting heritage.
There’s surely little doubt that the best-known model to bear the Octagon badge is the MGB, stalwart of the classic car scene and sure to turn up in numbers at just about any classic event you go to. It’s immediate predecessor, however, is the subject of this week’s Prime Find, a car that moved the marque’s image along from a maker of traditionally-styled open two-seaters that were more pre-war than post-war, even in the 1950’s (to be fair, not dissimilar to most manufacturers in the immediate post-war period) – indeed, the MG T-Type dated back to 1936 and through models TA to TF (missing out TE, for some reason), looked pretty much the same, featuring exposed headlights and running boards.
The MGA’s predecessors
With its sports cars starting to look pretty but dated, MG’s next two-seater represented a revolution in both styling and mechanical terms – sleek, streamlined, fully enclosed bodywork and a different, more modern engine and transmission.
The MGA is perhaps my favourite MG, and while there are never quite so many at UK shows as there are of its successor, there’s usually a few. One reason perhaps for their relative scarcity in the UK might be the model’s tremendous success as an export – MG produced 101,081 examples in the period from September 1955 to July 1962, of which all but 5,869 were for markets other than the UK, especially the USA. A very respectable number survive, with 1,827 licensed for the road and another 295 SORN. It would be interesting to know how many of these have been re-imported.
The engine came from the MG Magnette saloon and was a 1.5-litre 4-cylinder initially pushing out 68bhp, later increased to 72bhp. This endowed the MGA with a top speed of almost 98mph, achieved by Motor magazine, with 0-60mph achieved in 16 seconds.
The stylish body was available as both an open roadster and a coupé, which while not quite as handsome as the roadster, still looks pretty good to me, as the hardtop doesn’t look like an afterthought – not always the case with some roadster/hard-top comparisons.
Improvements were soon made, with a high-performance Twin-Cam 1.6-litre model introduced in 1958. This more potent version of the MGA could hit 113mph and accelerate from a standstill to 60mph in just 9.1 seconds according to Motor, thanks to an output of 108bhp, quite a jump from the original car. It’s no surprise that the Twin Cam is the most desired of MGA’s and commands the highest prices.
MG continued to improve the standard, adding the 1.6-litre (1588cc to be precise) engine in 1959 and then increasing capacity further for the Mark II version of the MGA, to 1622cc. By this time even the standard car was a proper 100mph-plus sports car, but it was to remain in production for just one more year before the MGA was replaced in 1962 by the less curvy, more understated MGB.
The MGA’s only direct rivals came from Sunbeam and Triumph in the forms of the Alpine and TR3 respectively. All three were priced within roughly £50 of one another and shared the traditional British sportscar characteristics of stylish two-seater bodies combined with respectable performance. Only the MGA came as a factory-built coupé, however, and the Harrington-built fastback Alpine just doesn’t look as well integrated to my eyes – the separate hard-top integrates much better. The TR3 could also be ordered with a separate factory hardtop, which looked OK, but not as a fixed head coupé.
Which would you choose?
So we come to “our” car, which is up for auction on July 17th at Historics’ next sale, at Windsorview Lakes. It’s not a Twin-Cam, which would have taken it well beyond our usual budget, and it’s a coupé, which for some might make it less desirable, though not to me. Being a 1960 car, it does have the bigger 1588cc engine, so it performs briskly enough. In the last two years it’s been resprayed in a great colour – Ireland Green – having originally been in Tyrolite Green, which lacks the subtlety of the new shade, as well as having had the interior almost wholly replaced. The seats are now in a very smart tan leather, thankfully without added piping of any colour, let alone the dreaded red and it complements the pastel green paintwork very nicely. It also makes a pleasant change to see an MGA that’s not on wire wheels. The estimate range for this exceptionally pretty sports coupé is £18,000 to £23,000, so either side of the threshold of our budget but close enough.
As per our usual practice, we have borrowed a few photographs from the auctioneer’s website and also as usual, if you are interested in bidding on this lot, we recommend arranging an inspection before you do. The full lot details can be seen here – it will be interesting to see what this MGA fetches!
With our Saturday instalment of Prime Find of the Week, we’re offering our services to the classic car community, by passing on our favourite classic car for sale from the week that passed. This top-tip might help a first-time-buyer to own his first classic, or it could even be the perfect motivation for a multiple-classic-car-owner to expand his garage with something different. We’ll let us inspire by anything from a cheap project to a stunning concours exotic, and hope that you will do the same.
Just remember – Any Classic is Better than No Classic! We obviously invite our readers to help prospective buyers with your views and maybe even experiences of any given model we feature. Further to that, if you stumble across a classic which you feel we ought to feature as Prime Find of the Week, then please send us a link to primefindoftheweek@viaretro.co.uk