The best MG for picnicking with the dog was probably the post 1931 Magna. At the time Cecil Kimber’s ambitions to challenge Bentley were flagging. The big 18/80 wasn’t selling and in only its second year the Midget was still a bit of a gamble. Kimber had to find something in between and Morris Engines was making a dinky little 6-cylinder for Wolseley that he could squeeze into a Midget. He didn’t much like the connection with staid old Wolseley so the cylinder dimensions were faked and steel plates fixed on the crankcase to cover it up.
Read MoreBuy Wisely. Buy Wolseley
In 1904 Wolseley took over a design by John Davenport Siddeley (1866-1953) and Austin departed in a huff to make cars on his own account. Wolseley flourished under Vickers and Morris-Nuffield ownership into a classic middle-class car sold under the slogan “Buy Wisely, Buy Wolseley”. Over the years we had several of a series that remained firmly comfortably middle-of-the road until the 1970s, languishing locked into the fatal grip of British Leyland.
Read MoreSCOTY Scottish Car of the Year
McConomy, Palmer, Thomsett, Thorpe, Jay, Griffin, Hicks, Acaster, Hancock, Herlihy, Bruce and Clark, perhaps not in that order, are among Jaguar Land Rover people sharing Discovery’s Scottish Car of the Year (SCOTY) title. Sixth from left is Stephen Park of the Association of Scottish Motoring Writers (ASMW) that made the award. It was a good celebration at Dalmahoy, Edinburgh with everybody “cutting a rug” as trendies said fifty years ago, into the wee sma’ oors.
Read MoreWolseley: A Cardinal among Cars
You know where you are with Anders Ditlev Clausager. Meticulous research, clear writing, a keen eye for detail; I could not wait to get into his Wolseley: A Very British Car. Anders sums up Wolseley delightfully. “Only in Britain did cars such as Wolseley flourish – the up-market quality but non-sporting car of relatively modest size is a British phenomenon with few parallels anywhere else.”
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