MG 14/28

There are only four differences in appearance between the flat-radiator MG 14/28 and the 14/40, some of which had rounded radiators. These are the louvres round the scuttle, the extension to the base of the radiator shell, round ship-style ventilators and the omission of an apron in the space between the front dumb-irons. With his careful eye for economy, MG director Cecil Kimber felt there was no need for fresh art work for each so between 1923 and 1929 advertisements for both were more or less interchangeable. WL2228 is a 13.9HP sports in claret and silver 4-seater first registered, according to the encyclopaedic Oxford to Abingdon, the classic source of reference by Robin Barraclough and Phil Jennings, on 18 May 1927.
(from Dove Publishing's MG File) 1926 MG 14/28 Super Sports
The distinction between specially bodied Morris Oxfords sold through The Morris Garages, and the establishment of MG as a car manufacturer in its own right, is far from clear-cut. An advertisement in the June 1924 Morris Owner magazine used the MG octagon against a picture of a de luxe Landaulette on the 14/28 Morris Oxford chassis. The following month there was an MG Sports Four Seater Morris Oxford in “burnished aluminium and smoke blue, or to choice,” advertised with, “The graceful lines of a yacht.” Kimber’s other preoccupation was sailing, and it was no surprise that this car too featured ship-style ventilator cowls. In 1925 there was an MG 14/28 Weymann saloon, “absolutely devoid of rattle”, with four wheel brakes. Yet it was not until mid-October 1927 that The Morris Garages registered cars with Oxford County Borough Council, as anything other than Morris Oxford or Morris Cowley. One 14/28 was a well finished saloon advertised as “…on the famous ‘Imshi’ chassis”, a reference to a six-month expedition by the Daily Mail’s motoring correspondent through France, Italy, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Spain to prove the worth of the Morris Oxford. “Imshi” was Arabic for “Get a move on.”
BODY: Saloon 4-door, 4-seat; coupe; 2-doors; 2-seats; weight 18cwt (914.4kg). Open 4-seater, 2-door; weight 18.25cwt (927.1kg)
ENGINE
4-cylinders; in-line; 75mm x 102mm, 1802cc; compr 5:1; 35bhp (27kW) @ 4000rpm; 19.4bhp (15kW)/l.
ENGINE STRUCTURE
Side camshaft; side valve; mushroom tappets; detachable cast iron cylinder head and block; aluminium pistons; Smith, SU, or Solex carburettor; 3-bearing crankshaft.
TRANSMISSION
Rear wheel drive; wet cork clutch; 3-speed non-synchromesh manual gearbox; enclosed torque tube; spiral bevel final drive 4.42:1.
CHASSIS DETAILS
Steel channel-section chassis; ash-framed aluminium body; pressed steel scuttle; suspension, front half-elliptic leaf springs, rear three-quarter elliptic; Gabriel snuubers at front, Hartford shock absorbers at rear; Duplex Hartfords on salonette; Four wheel brakes, front patent Rubury, 12in (30.48cm) drums (with optional servo £20), 1925-1926; worm and wheel steering; 7gal (31.8litre) fuel tank; 700 x 80 Dunlop Cord beaded-edge tyres; 3-stud steel artillery wheels with Ace discs 1924-1925; bolt-on wire spoke 1925-1926. Saloon 28 x 4.95 Dunlop reinforced balloon tyres.
DIMENSIONS
Wheelbase 102in (259.08cm) and 108in (274.32cm); track 48in (121.92cm); length: 152in (386.08cm); width: 60in (152.4cm); height: 65in (165.1cm) with hood up.
PERFORMANCE
Max speed 65mph (105kph); 19.4mph (31.22kph) @1000rpm; 0-50mph 23.8sec; fuel consumption 19mpg (14.9l/100km)
PRICE Open 4-seater £375; 2-seater £350; Salonette £475. 4-seat salonette without tail compartment £495. Optional equipment included luggage carrier, a variety of mascots, rev counter, spot lights, and a monograme or crest on the door at £2.2s (£2.10). PRODUCTION approx 400
XV 9508 is a 14/40, first registered on 29 December 1928.

MG GT Concept

The MGF GT Concept of 2004 was another pretty coupe that never made it into production. Like the Ford ‘Anglo’ Saxon (see blog below) it was a logical development on an existing platform. Based on the MGF, it still looks good enough six years later to be worth the attention of MG’s European Design Centre, opened in June under director Tony Williams-Kenny. In 2004 MG-Rover tried to portray it as a successor to the MGB GT of the 1960s but it was far better than that. This would have been a worthy competitor to up-market coupes like the Audi TT.

The style of MG-Rover’s Peter Stevens was better than its publicity. Maybe that was part of what went wrong and the company’s demise saw off the smart little coupe. This rump of the British Motor Corporation, which once had 30 per cent of the British market, had slumped to 3 per cent under the Famous Four led by John Towers and what could have been a premium priced product never got past the prototype stage. It was to have been powered by the 2.5litre 24-valve quad cam KV6, with 200bhp to provide 0-60 in 6sec and a top speed of 145mph. The body had a drag coefficient of 0.31 and the only downside might have been access to the mid-engine.
The MG GT concept was announced with 17in Gunsmoke five-spoke OZ alloy wheels, similar to those on the MG XPower SV. There was probably not much time or resource for wind-tunnel testing although the designers included an extended front aero splitter and a long tail-spoiler integrated into the boot lid, which it was said would reduce lift at speed.

MG Motor UK is owned by SAIC, the Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation, and the new Design Centre has a studio for 20 designers, next to the SAIC Motors European Technical Centre (SMTC) on the Birmingham site. Williams-Kenny described the centre as, “A huge step forward. The advanced technology and dedicated team make us one of the most professional design studios in the world – we may not be the biggest, but we aim to be the best. We will be finalising details of the new MG6 from this studio and it gives us superb tools and facilities to go forward on projects such as the MG Zero concept and beyond.”

MGB Twin Cam and Austin A30

Classic cars cost more than you expect. I loved my MGB and A30. They were fine in prosperous times but I am relieved, in a way, I don’t still have them. The A30 was pure nostalgia. The first car I ever owned was an A30 and recreating the noises and the feel of what you were driving as an early-twenty-something was enjoyable. I was late into having my own car. The A30 was a strong monocoque, it was quite sound when I bought it but keeping the dreaded tinworm at bay seemed never-ending. And I did like (see other blogs) to make a car feel like it was when new. I could do this with the MG. Pretty well all it got from its donor car was the chassis plate. As the accompanying piece from the Telegraph of 1998 shows, it was an attempt to create a Twin Cam MGB. Had it been more skilfully executed, it would have been a fine car. As it was, it proved troublesome but it looked sensational – perfectly period, and it was about as fast as my Z3, which meantime remains my regular everyday classic.

Equivocation

Equivocation
In the 1930s road test writers didn’t want to be too critical. Practical Motorist in its May 1937 report on the Rover Ten enthused. “The bodywork of the car is not ‘flashy,’ but has the unmistakeable appearance of sound construction and excellent craftsmanship. However it felt obliged to find some fault. “The brakes were normally quiet in action, but it was sometimes noticed that there was a very high-pitched shriek just as the car was coming to rest. In all fairness it must be emphasised that the sound was certainly not loud and was so near the limit of audibility that it was often undetected.” So that was all right then.

An Old Friend

Rediscovered an old friend at the Goodwood Revival meeting. Cooper MG NKC195 lined up for the Stirling Moss 80th birthday tribute and I confirmed with owner George Cooper that it belonged to Frank D Dundas, for whom I navigated many times on his local South of Scotland Car Club and my local Lanarkshire Car Club rallies in the 1950s. Most memorably we scored third in class on the 1955 Scottish Rally in Frank’s Morgan Plus 4, one of the first with the Triumph TR2 engine. I only did one event in the Cooper, as replacement for his regular navigator Jimmy Bogie, one of a rallying family still to the fore. The Cooper had minimal weather protection; it wasn’t suitable for the “plot and bash” events of the time. It was all right for the bash, but a bit inconvenient for plotting. It had a hood of sorts, and a proper windscreen not the aero screens it has now, but OS maps blew about a lot.

After Frank started rallying the Morgan PSM 508, the Cooper was consigned to the roof of his Dumfries agricultural building. I never knew at the time that Stirling Moss had driven it.

I came across the Cooper at service area on the M5 some years ago. It had been splendidly restored and repainted blue instead of bronze (maybe it was green). I had to look up Doug Nye’s Cooper Cars (Osprey 1983) for more detail. Cooper had been making 500cc racing single seaters, then in 1948-1949 John Cooper put a Vauxhall Ten engine into the front of a chassis, engineered much like one of the racers. It had box-section longerons and independent transverse leaf springing front and back.

Encouraged perhaps by George Phillips’s 1949 Le Mans MG, Cooper built another, like the Vauxhall, with an MG TC engine developed by Barwell Engineering to give 75bhp, against the standard car’s 55bhp. This became the works racing car and was driven by John Cooper to a second place at Goodwood in May 1950. In June, Nye says, Moss was available to drive the car at Goodwood, “but it proved fractious and he was only fifth. John took over – actually wearing Stirling’s helmet – in a five-lap handicap and finished second, setting fastest lap at 73.56mph. In the final members’ meeting of the year he at last achieved that elusive win, averaging 71.74mph for the five laps and topping 100mph along Lavant Straight.”

John Bolster road-tested the car afterwards, deciding the suspension was on the hard side but the ride still good on bad surfaces. “In cornering the machine really excels.” JV Bolster was almost as much of a hero as Stirling Moss. In the 1950s I had admired them both at a distance. Getting to know them later only enhanced the respect. Boisterous Bolster, melodramatic Moss. National Treasures and they both drove this astonishing little car, Frank Dundas’s Cooper MG and he either didn’t tell me or he didn’t know. Most likely he thought it didn’t much matter.

What a treat to see it at Goodwood and re-live a piece of history. That’s George Cooper and his lady wife Carol: "...social secretary, without her I would not be able to go anywhere," in the picture above. The one on the left in the vintage dress is number one Dymock daughter Charlotte. Frank Dundas, generous, engaging, warm-hearted to a Dumfries fault and a gifted driver, would have enjoyed the occasion.

MG Rover

MG Rover

It is all very well for the Department of Trade and Industry, or whatever it calls itself this week, being wise about MG Rover after the event. How much better had it been wise beforehand. It was obvious six months ahead of the April 2005 collapse that the company was coming to pieces. Here is what I wrote in November 2004.

Scotland on Sunday Motoring by Eric Dymock, 28 November 2004

MG Rover and China

Nearly everybody wants MG Rover to thrive. There are too many jobs, too much industrial prestige at risk, to allow loose talk. Yet the euphoria that greeted last week’s news of a billion pound Chinese investment is fraught with peril. Put it this way, if I was a senior executive at MG Rover, and wanted to find a scapegoat for its collapse next year, an inscrutable Oriental government would look tempting.

The groundwork has been laid. Dire warnings that MG Rover is not viable without a major partner have been widely aired. The company admits that without the Chinese deal it has no future. It is so short of cash that its research and development budget is the lowest for decades. It has no new models anywhere close to production. Sales from the group, the rump of the British Motor Corporation that once had 30 per cent of the British market, have sunk to around 3 per cent.

In November its auditors Deloitte drew attention to the problem. The company’s parent Phoenix Venture Holdings could only be considered a going concern because it had assumed that a deal with Shanghai would provide money for the development of new models. “In forming our opinion we have considered the adequacy of the disclosures,” said Deloitte. “These relate to the satisfactory completion of negotiations with Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation (SAIC), which may supply additional sources of finance. In view of the significance of this uncertainty, we consider this should be drawn to your attention.”

What an opportunity. If SAIC’s owners, the Chinese authorities, refuse to ratify the deal the Birmingham Four who own Rover can say: “The game’s up but it wasn’t our fault. A big boy said he was going to give us money and then ran away.”

Shanghai is already counselling caution. The industry was more sceptical than British newspapers following the announcement, carefully arranged for a Saturday, that billions were on the way from China. Suspicions were raised that once again MG Rover was buying time by claiming it was all over bar the shouting. But the small print spoke louder It was clear that the deal had yet to be agreed by the Chinese government. Rover maintained this was only a formality and approval was arranged for January or February.

SAIC’s response was: “The programme of the deal is still under discussion and we still have to talk about many details. We read in the British press that we are going to invest £1billion into Rover, but it’s not like that, that’s not how it works. We need government approval for a project like this, and we’re not used to the British custom of going to the press, as this would cause inconvenience with the government. If the British press say one figure, then we hand a report to the government with a different sum, then it’s a problem for us.”

You can bet your life it’s a problem. But it is nothing like the problem MG Rover is facing. Moreover betraying incomplete negotiations to the press is not customary at all, despite what MG Rover may have told SAIC. Not only have Rover sales collapsed; its directors faced such criticism over their featherbedded pension fund that they had to scale down its payments. Desperation over new model announcements has reached fever pitch. Concept cars, plans, projects, coupes, and racy never-to-be-produced sports saloons have earned plenty of column-inches in an uncritical motoring press.

The aim of the publicity is not to sell cars, so much as convince creditors, suppliers and the SAIC that MG Rover is a viable vigorous company. It is a chimera. Rover engaged one of the best stylists in the business, Peter Stevens, to produce stunning new designs. Some of his MGs, based on old Rovers, have found buyers. Yet the failure to sell sufficient numbers speaks volumes. The customers are not convinced. Some Rovers like the 75, designed under BMW’s tutelage, are outstanding bargains yet they are scarcely profitable.

We have been down this road before. Likely partners in rescue plans have been paraded ever since BMW backed off in May 2000. Proton of Malaysia, China Brilliance, even Tata of India which produced the lacklustre City Rover have all been rumoured or announced as likely investors for the hundreds of millions needed. New cars have been under development, notably by the talented but in the end failing TWR Group, led by the ultimately unsuccessful Scottish former racing driver Tom Walkinshaw.

The question is whether China needs to spend a billion on MG Rover when BMW, Volkswagen, Ford, Honda, and Citroën are queuing up to spend billions inside China. General Motors’ joint venture plant in Shanghai, built in 1997 with inward investment of $1.5billion, was planned to make 100,000 cars a year but has had to add extra production lines and double-shift working to meet demand. VW will build one assembly plant and two engine factories to double capacity from 800,000 to 1.6million by 2008.

VW has been in China since the 1980s and will spend €5.3billion on its expansion in partnership with the same SAIC with whom Rover has been negotiating. Shanghai has no need to reverse such a cash flow, and spend money on a small time outfit like MG Rover, which uses out of date technology to build cars well past their sell-by date.