JustBritish

I just realized that I never published any story on the front page of JustBritish about my current projects. There are links to them over there on the right, but you may never have scanned down. Anyway, I am currently restoring a 1973 MG Midget and behind that waits a 1962 Triumph TR4. Both are pretty far gone and will take a good bit of work, although I personally believe they are not as bad as they look. My wife seems to differ with that opinion – as is normal.

My goal, whatever that is worth, is to have the Midget on the road before year’s end. It may not be perfect, but I would like to be able to drive it. After that, I need to start the slower and more expensive work on the TR4. The general hope is to have it ready to take to the road for its 50th birthday in 2012. This is a car that I really want right, so we will just have to see how that plan goes.

Please give me any input you may have on the cars and stay tuned for updates on the progress. And if you have car or restoration project that you would like me to feature here, drop me a line with the particulars!

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Seen from Longbridge, MG Rover’s former base, the business’s industrial legacy five years on looks decidedly threadbare.

In one portion of the cavernous and almost deserted plant – once one of Europe’s largest – China’s Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation, owner of the rump MG brand, began making its TF two-seater sports car last year in small numbers for the UK and Ireland, using Chinese and European parts.

The company will not comment on production volumes, but acknowledges they are modest. “It’s not MG Rover numbers – it’s a single model we’re producing,” says Peter Brooking, marketing manager for MG Motor UK.

Most MG cars are now made in China. In 2006, a year after buying rights to the brand from MG Rover’s liquidators, Nanjing Automobile Corporation moved an entire production line from Birmingham halfway across the world in 4,900 shipping containers.

SAIC, which has since taken over NAC, also bought rights to some Rover models, made now under the Roewe brand.

Notwithstanding the much-diminished output at Longbridge – or the thousands of jobs lost when MG Rover collapsed – other marques from its erstwhile portfolio are thriving under different ownership.

BMW has expanded annual production of the Mini to more than 200,000 cars, from only about 12,000 a year before the Munich carmaker bought it. It now employs about 3,500 people, from a few hundred when MG Rover owned it.

Norbert Reithofer, BMW’s chief executive, announced plans last week to bring production of two new models to the brand’s plant in Cowley near Oxford in a move expected to create 1,000 or more jobs.

Land Rover, sold to Ford Motor and then to Tata Motors last year, has arguably also fared better under a new owner. It recorded its highest sales yet in 2007, as Ford was selling it.

Sales figures have wilted over the past year – down 38 per cent in the first half of 2009 on a year ago – but together with Jaguar it remains one of Britain’s largest carmakers.

“There is a strong argument to say that even if you take into account the sad demise of MG Rover, the UK motor industry is much better off than it was,” says Paul Everitt, chief executive of the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders.

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The year was 1984. Roger Dougal, a newly minted Ph.D. in electrical engineering, was beginning his career in the University of South Carolina’s College of Engineering.

He was the new owner of a 1972 MGB – a red convertible, perfect for life in the Palmetto State, where he could zip along the highways and city streets with the car’s top down practically year-round. Lightweight with easy handling, the MGB was a snazzy roadster for a young professor on the go.

But that was, shall we say, soooo last century.
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There is an excellent article over on Driving.Ca by Bill Vance about some of our favorite cars, the MG sedans of the 50s and 60s. As the article says, “The MG name is inextricably associated with the sporty, two-passenger British roadster, a car that laid the foundation for the North American sports car movement following the Second World War. What is less well known is that MG also made some interesting sedans before the war — including the 1937-1939 2.3-litre SA — and after. The post-war sedans were imported to North America.” Often these were badge engineered with other marks such as Morris, Austin, and Wolseley.

From those early SAs all the way up through the MG 1100s and 1300s, these sedans while not well known in the US had a great following at home in the UK. Please head on over to the site and read the article, and if you find these cars as fascinating as I do, make sure to pick up a copy of MG Saloon Cars: From the 1920s to the 1970s by Anders Ditlev Clausager. It is a beautiful book and really relays the history that not many know.

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