Celebrating 90 years of MG

I began in the corner of a backstreet Oxford workshop, with some clever work to modify a Morris car. Ninety years on the MG remains one of the most loved sports cars ever built, with the birthday of the MG marque being celebrated across the globe.

For millions more it will always be the ultimate symbol of fun on four wheels, with few other vehicles coming even close to stirring similar levels of devotion.

But nowhere will the memories be more vivid and poignant than in Abingdon, the town whose name will forever be linked to the MG.

Close to one million MGs were made in Abingdon, with about three-quarters being exported. Today a McDonald’s marks the one-time entrance to where the MG factory on Marcham Road had once stood.

The MG, once just a sideline for the general manager of Morris Motors, Cecil Kimber, who took pleasure from taking cars from the parent organisation and transforming them into sports cars, was introduced to the British motoring public for the first time in 1924.

And the year will be marked with a series of events organised by the MG Car Club, whose headquarters, Kimber House in Cemetery Road, is just a stone’s throw away from the original factory site.

The club continues to provide an archive for MG and a home-from-home for the club’s thousands of members living around the globe.

To compliment MG’s impressive racing pedigree, the car club will be taking over Silverstone’s Grand Prix circuit for the fifth consecutive year with a packed weekend of motorsport on June 21 and June 22, with a spectacular array of MGs of all ages battling it out.

Only this time the motoring festival at Silverstone will be renamed MG90 in honour of the marque’s 90-year anniversary celebrations.

Spokesman for the MG Car Club, George Woodward, said members from around the globe were looking forward to taking part in the celebrations.

He said: “About 15,000 people will come along for the Silverstone weekend and there are lots of other events too. There are 11,000 MG Car Club members, but not all of them are MG car owners.

“But you don’t have to actually own an MG to be a member of the car club — even if you don’t own an MG you can still live the dream by coming along to the rallies and looking at other people’s cars. “Enthusiasts are coming from all over the world for these 90th celebrations, from places as far away as Australia and America.

“People can call in at the visitor centre and see our displays and MG owners also drop in from time to time. There is also a permanent exhibition at Abingdon County Hall Museum and there is currently an MG90-themed exhibition on the top floor.”

Historic MG artefacts have been loaned to the museum to create the special exhibition, which is open to the public until July 20.

At the heart of the permanent display is the last MGB off the production line, which was craned in to the museum through an upstairs window, much to the astonishment of passers-by watching from the town’s Market Place.

For the official opening of the MG90 special display at the museum in March there was an impressive line-up of MGs from almost every decade on the Market Place, from the 1930s to the present day, in chronological order, including Mike Allison’s 1935 MG NA Magnette.

A small suitcase in the exhibition, bearing the initials CK, ensures we remember the remarkable and ultimately tragic life of the man who MG enthusiasts will tell you was the real founder of MG, rather than his boss William Morris (later to become Lord Nuffield).

By 1929 it had become obvious that the factory built in Oxford to build MGs did not have the capacity to meet the demand and it was Kimber who oversaw the historic move of his brainchild from Oxford to Abingdon.

It marked the dawning of a glorious era of racing success and the car becoming established as the most popular British sports car marque ever.

The new business was established as the MG car company, with William Morris remaining the main shareholder.

The cars were developed into racing cars, proving their worth on racetracks throughout the world, particularly at Brooklands, England’s premier racetrack.

As Brian Moylan, who worked as a mechanic for 29 years on rally and racing cars in the MG factory’s competition department, including the 1967 Monte Carlo Rally winner, recalls in his introduction to the book The MG’s Abingdon Factory: “Those early MGs proved to be the fastest cars of their class in the world. Despite the success of these specialist cars, Kimber never lost sight of the need to build standard cars — much to the delight of the sporting motorists of that time.”

The finished cars were tested on track, made from cylinders, within the factory.

But in 1935 William Morris sold his personal holding in MG to Morris Motors Ltd.

Faced with losing sole control and having to take instructions from head office, Kimber, the father of the British sports car and the genius behind MG, handed in his resignation.

He would die in a train accident in 1945, carrying the suitcase that appears at the exhibition.

Among those who attended the exhibition’s opening were ‘famous’ faces from the former Abingdon factory, including Don Hayter, chief designer of the iconic MGB, Peter Browning, BMC competitions manager responsible for a global racing and rallying team, and Jimmy Cox and Mr Moylan, who both worked on the various record breakers and competition cars.

This year’s celebrations will certainly be happier than the week-long celebrations in 1979, marking the MG’s 50th birthday in Abingdon.

Workers returning to work the following Monday morning were given news that the factory was to close. There would be talk of a rescue bid from Aston Martin, but the last MGB Tourer drove off the end of the production line on October 22, 1980.

But the sorry end did little to tarnish the romance of the MG for the likes of Richard Martin, Abingdon born and bred, who as a schoolboy had watched the MGs head off out of town to be exported, and hoped one day that he would be able to drive one too.

Father-of-two Mr Martin, 67, now retired after selling books for Blackwell’s, was to realise his dream.

“My initial enthusiasm started when I was seven or eight years old. My friend’s dad worked as a security guard at the export gate, roughly where the big Tesco is now off Marcham Road, so we used to go down and watch, although I never got to go inside the factory.

“I got my first MG when I was in my early 20s and had an MG Midget for a while until I acquired a mother-in-law and we didn’t have enough seats. My wife has an MG6 and I have an Iris blue 1964 MGB.

“The MG definitely has a certain magnetism and it brings people together,” said Mr Martin.

“But it’s the owners that are really special — they are the glue who hold everything together.”