MG - Guide: Including Performance Modifications for All Models from TC to MGA

1. The Cult and the Idol

The little car sat purposefully in the driveway while the two young men walked admiringly around it, pausing here and there to peer intently through its wire-spoked wheels and into the deep, two-seater cockpit. They gazed at the impressive array of green-tinted instruments and wiggled the tight, steel-spring spoked steering wheel. Finally one of them eased himself into the driver’s seat, pulled a small knob in the center of the gracefully curved dash, toed gingerly at the throttle, and listened with great concentration to the throaty drum-roll of exhaust that ensued. With an expression almost of regret he turned off the switch, slithered out, and stood back for another overall look.

What he saw was a car that was ten years old, give or take a month. Low and square, it was almost all hood, and it sat on its high spidery wheels looking for all the world like a coffin riding on four harps. From a styling point of view it could have been twenty years old yet it was mint—it could have rolled out of a dealer’s showroom the day before. In effect the taut little machine was timeless. Taken separately, each line and component was square and antiquated—taken in the aggregate, these lines blended into one coordinated whole. The effect was pure car.

Finally the young man turned to the other. Okay, he said, eighteen hundred it is. Will you take a check?

Ten minutes later the little car was dancing off down the road, the fading burble of its exhaust punctuated by three evenly spaced sharp cracks as the new owner pounced from gear to gear, happy though poorer by almost two thousand dollars.

Ten years before, in 1948, that little car had been sold, new, by a dealer for a shade over $1,800. A decade and three owners later it changed hands for $1,800, and if anybody concerned suffered a twinge of regret it was the young man clutching a large check in his hand as he watched the car disappear from his life forever.

What was this car, and what was there about it that made a ten-year-old machine, no matter how good its condition, worth a price virtually equal to the amount it brought spanking new?

Taking things in their proper order, the car was an MG-TC. From a small beginning in 1947 it had triggered hundreds of thousands of Americans and others into a renewed awareness that driving could be more than a mere transporting of the human frame in hydraulically assisted supineness. In short, the MG-TC and its ensuing descendants proved once again that driving a car could be fun. And it was a stepping stone for thousands upon thousands into the wonderful world that has become known as sports motoring. And for thousands of others it has remained the only real car in the world, no matter what changes its manufacturers have wrought from year to year.

It is this latter factor that helps to explain why a ten-year-old car can be worth the same money it cost when new. But only in part. The rest of it is harder to explain.

The MG Cult

Your true MG idolater is a being apart. To him, the initiate in the mysteries of the MG, the discomforts of a kidney-whipping wind pouring in over cut-down doors, the miseries (to others) of a top that is no more than a water resistant rain rag (which is rarely erected in anything less than a blizzard), and a cart-sprung ride are pure ecstacy. From the standpoint of modern automobilism, from the scriptures according to Detroit, the MG, particularly the earlier varieties, is an uncomfortable car. It’s cramped for foot room and luggage space; it rides like a sleigh dragged rapidly over a Connecticut cornfield; it takes a certain amount of shoulder to muscle its taut, quick steering around a corner; and yet it requires constant awareness to keep it in a straight line.

One of the truly shriven, co-author Karl Ludvigsen, at Thompson Raceway with his TC. Memories of this car linger on fondly, though mainly in the region of the coccyx. TC’s were so stiffly suspended.

To make matters seemingly altogether hopeless, the MG in all its variants, including the latest MGA, is ridiculously underpowered, at least on paper. Depending on the model and tune, only 54 to 72 horses are available when the tap is fully opened. In our enlightened day and age this is washing-machine and lawn-mower power. So why all the fuss?

Until recently, even on a straight line, this seemingly miniscule team could, and often did when handled by one of the shriven, embarrass many a Detroit machine by hauling away while the Detroiter, four times the size and with three times the horsepower, vomited valves to keep up. This is not true today when even bread-and-butter family cars can do a rushing hundred miles in an hour, but lead the family machine onto a twisting section of road with an MG and—except for one of the three or four production hop-ups, vintage 1957—the bigger car cannot stay within sight. On a really tight piece of pike even the formidable hopped-up monsters can be well and truly trimmed by an MG in the hands of a member of the cult.

Part of this is due to the fact that the MG engine in all of its variations, including the radically changed BMC B-Type unit in the latest models, is probably the most dependable piece of high-performance machinery ever bolted together by dedicated men. And the builders of the MG from MG Number 1 in 1923 to the present MGA have been truly dedicated to the job at hand.

From time immemorial the proof of an automobile has been its success in competition, and the builders of the MG have for more than thirty years proved their product in the hard school of racing, both against other marques and against the clock for records. With the exception of Bugatti and possibly—just possibly—Porsche, MG has won more of the former type of event than any other marque. And hands down they hold more absolute class records against time than any make ever built. In fact they make a fetish of it. If some upstart comes along and takes one of their records, the men of Abingdon-on-Thames go out and recapture that record, and it doesn’t much matter if the record is for absolute top speed in Class F (currently something well in hand over 240 mph) or a twenty-four-hour grind around a twelve-mile circle or a week-long tour of the Montlhery Autodrome.

All of this helps to explain the aura of cultism that belongs almost solely to the MG. Dedication such as this is sure to be reflected in the products. There is something compelling about driving on everyday, go-to-the-corner chores in a car every attribute of which bespeaks its hairy-chested ancestry.

A Forgiving Car

Despite this background and a continuing program of racing— improving the breed as some horsey purists call it—virtually all MG’s except the out-and-out racing varieties (the mighty K3, J4, and Q and R types, more about which later) have been cars that anyone with a red corpuscle or two can drive and eventually drive well. In fact they demand it, beg to be barreled, to be given treatment that would make junkyard bait out of a lesser car in a matter of days.

One of the many epithets attached to the MG over the years is forgiving. A forgiving car will excuse all but the most ham-fisted handling and still keep its driver safe and sound, and this is just about what the MG does, in spades. Even the novice, the newcomer to the MG, will find himself doing things that his fellow citizens frown upon, officially and legally, with an hour or two behind the chest-high wheel. Still one finds that the car will hold to the road as if it were painted down with the center line; it would take a ghastly error of judgment and handling to get into trouble, one feels. And it’s true.

Even if the unforgivable is committed—an offense which even the MG will not pardon—it still endeavors to hold its occupant safe.

A couple of examples will suffice to prove the point. One warm spring evening a Miami gentleman who shall be nameless here became, as a result of the combined intoxication of his MG-TC and a more than sufficient number of martinis, somewhat less than cautious. With not one but two passengers in the deep-set cockpit, he put his foot flat on the throttle and wound the car up past its supposed peak rpm of 5500 in every gear, including fourth. In the space of some three blocks he managed to hit about 85 mph and then backed off to a breezy 60 miles to the hour. About that time a large, heavy Pontiac started across the over-enthusiastic gentleman’s avenue. The MG