SUCCESSION PLANNING: FURTHER DEVELOPMENT OF THE MGA
In any car company, by the time a new model is on sale, those responsible for the future direction of the marque in question will have turned their attention to the next project. The revolution that brought forward the MGA was a bold and significant step, but even before the first specimens were heading down the Abingdon production lines, John Thornley and Syd Enever were thinking of their next moves.
As we saw in Chapter 2, Thornley had given a lukewarm, politically astute nod towards the MG Midgets of Gerald Palmer, but by the time the MGA was in full swing, the Palmer era was over and his sports-car concepts had been abandoned. Even so, the idea of a monocoque future soon became seemingly inevitable, and so what would become the basis of the MGB began to take form. Beginning with a concept called ‘EX 205’ (MG Two Seater – ADO 23; eleven entries from 20 June 1957 to 2 February 1958, after which a note was added ‘transferred into ADO23 book’), this project eventually evolved into the later EX 214 and ADO 23 – the true basis of the MGB, the stories of which deserve exploration in another book.
An eighth-scale model by Harry Herring with a clever removable tail section, intended to show how a more bulky boot could have been accommodated..
AUTHOR
Talking to Kenneth Ullyett in 1960, John Thornley admitted that most efforts to improve the MGA were doomed to failure:
We were thinking in terms of giving the MGA a facelift – after all, the car had been in production from 1955 to 1959, and there comes a time when the designer is called in to give a car extended currency, no matter how successful is the basic conception. As the MGA doesn’t wear out, anyway it was necessary to consider a change even if only to interest the potential buyer going into the showroom.
As nobody likes change merely for the sake of it, our design team was set the problem of ascertaining what really could be an improvement. We played about with alternative fronts, but, bearing in mind the MGA is an idealized design, conceived as an entity, it is hardly surprising that no matter what we did to the front, the result was less satisfactory, and usually less aerodynamic.
We experienced the same not-unanticipated disappointment when we experimented with the back end. Each of the alterations seemed to have a stuck-on look, and it didn’t take long to realize that worthwhile improvement was not to be had this way. So we analysed the mind of the MGA user and asked ourselves: ‘What does he want?’ And this produced a simple answer: ‘Even better performance.’ This meant a little more urge in acceleration, and an even better maximum, with the corollary that the car should be made to stop even better. As we already had the 1588cc engine in the Twin Cam, we decided to standardize that as the ‘1600’. And to produce stopping power in keeping with the improved performance, we fitted Lockheed discs to the front.
One of Harry Herring’s superb models, created at the behest of Syd Enever as a possible facelift for the MGA Twin Cam – sometimes referred to initially as the ‘MGB’. The nose is blunter in shape, and the rear wings have been stretched with vestigial fins, all the rage at the time.
AUTHOR
The idea of a bigger engine as well as more power was a common demand from the USA, as Gus Ehrman told the author (see Chapter 7, the MGA 1600). There were certainly thoughts of a brand new powertrain, in the form of a V4 engine, and whilst the project was really aimed more at the BMC mainstream as well as the MGA’s eventual successor, there was an MGA-based project called ‘EX 216’ (entries were EX 216/1, dated 16 September 1958 to EX 216/13, dated 29 December 1958, mostly related to modifications needed to the front cross-member and other installation requirements). Roy Brocklehurst told the author: ‘We were often used by Longbridge as a sort of experimental department – we fitted a V4 engine into an MGA, and subsequently tried it in the first MGB.’
Don Hayter said that Syd Enever disliked the uneven exhaust beat created by the V4 configuration, but denied to the author that the Abingdon works ever had an MGA with a V4 engine that could be driven: ‘No – we never had a running engine. We did installations – we dropped one into a car – but we never had a running V4. I’m not sure what Longbridge did – they had one of our cars for years and years, first an MGA and then an MGB. Whether or not they ever put a V4 engine in it, I don’t know.’
The grille on this quarter-scale Herring Twin Cam model is wider and more upright than that of the production MGA.
AUTHOR
This contrasts slightly with what Roy Brocklehurst told journalist Jon Pressnell in another interview: ‘[the V4] was quite a nice power unit... I’m sure if that engine had gone into production we could have made a reasonable motor car around it... It was extremely smooth...’ Peter Neal has written that the MGA V4 was tested at MIRA in December 1958, but confirms that the idea never took off.
Before long, however, whether Syd Enever liked them or not, both the V4 and a related V6 unit were abandoned when BMC concluded that they would have been too costly to develop, necessitating ripping up and reorganizing much of Longbridge’s engine production facilities at South Works. Also, despite the unusually narrow V formation of their cylinders, they would not have been ideally suited to the short-nosed transverse front-wheel drive configuration favoured by Alec Issigonis for his ADO 16 and 17 family saloon projects.
In the event, MG enthusiasts had to make do with the twin cam, the original 1600 and the final 1600 Mark II, the stories of which have, of course, been covered earlier. Anyone seeking a larger engine in an open MG roadster would have to wait for the MGB of 1962, with its 1798cc unit.
Meanwhile, throughout the MGA production period there was a running EX-Register code ‘EX 191 – development work on production MGA’, which eventually ran to 450 entries, from 19 May 1955 through to 7 February 1961. The old Cowley ‘Design Order’ code for the MGA, DO 1062, persisted in parallel, with hundreds of detail sketches and drawings for things from suspension to bumpers and carpets (twenty of them for carpets alone). The very last entry was DO 1062/448 of 11 August 1966 (a one-off late entry for ‘steering geometry MGA Mk II’), although the last regular entry, DO 1062/447, was dated 9 November 1960.
Significantly this development work included a recurrent theme of independent or semi-independent rear suspension. Some of the interesting entries include the following:
EX 191/142–149 (dated 28 May 1957): relates to ‘overdrive’.
EX 191/150–156 (dated 9 July to 19 August 1957): refers to rear disc brakes as well as ‘adjustable independent rear suspension’.
Thereafter there are various intermittent ‘IRS’ entries, including EX 191/200 and 201 (dated 14 and 28 January 1958 respectively) for ‘independent rear suspension – trailing arm with coil springs’.
EX 191/270 (dated 12 August 1958) is referred to as ‘proposed air cleaner for 1700cc MGA’.
EX 191/320 (dated 1 January 1959) is for ‘independent rear suspension – 15-degree arms’, and similar themes continued through 1959.
EX 191/423 (dated 23 March 1960) refers to ‘25-degree arm – IRS Scheme’, and EX 191/444 (dated 19 April 1960) describes ‘assembly of 25-degree arm’.
During 1961, there was also a parallel code kept at Abingdon for the MGA 1600 as part of the EX-Register but under the BMC ‘ADO 31’ code sequence: it ran from ADO31/1, dated 21 February 1961, to ADO31/21, dated 28 October 1961.
As BMC laid plans for a technology-led future in the late 1950s, fired by forward-looking design and engineering trends at the time, Sir Leonard Lord sanctioned a special engine research ‘cell’ at Longbridge under the management of Dr Duncan Stuart. Their key task was to look at future powertrains for the corporation, and one of their projects that was given the green light for further development was a family of narrow-angled V4 and V6 engines, provisionally in 2- and 3-litre capacity respectively.
Although the BMC units were clearly inspired by Lancia engines used in the Appia and Aurelia, the concept would have echoes in the family of V4 and V6 engines that Ford’s European arm would create a few years later; but whilst the Ford units would reach production, the BMC project was cut short. Graham Robson has described the engine as having a single cylinder head with a single overhead camshaft, and two SU carburettors required even for the ‘base’ versions, and two sets of exhaust pipes and downpipes – adding to complexity, transverse bulk and cost.
The costs of putting the new unit into production, and finding the space to build it without disrupting existing outputs of the ‘A’ and ‘B’ series engines, undoubtedly militated against Stuart’s revolution, as undoubtedly did the fact that the older units were still highly successful and fit for purpose. The fact that Alec Issigonis was not in charge of the project probably didn’t help, either. It would be another thirty years before Volkswagen would introduce their narrow-angle ‘VR6’ engine, which used a broadly similar concept of a very narrow angle between the cylinder banks.
Before focus turned to what would become the MGB, however, MG had other diversions en route. The first of these was, of course, the twin-cam engine and the addition of disc brakes (see Chapter 6). Then there were the special projects, such as EX 183 and EX 186 (see Chapter 10). Next in line was a project to create a ‘cheaper MGA’ – the very idea of which was a source of some irritation for Thornley. The background to this exercise was a direction from BMC headquarters to develop a small sports car intended to adopt some of the running gear of the Austin A30 or Morris Minor 1000, which at Abingdon soon translated into a short-lived project called EX 188. However, desk-top exercises soon led Thornley to the conclusion that a sports car based on the Morris Minor platform was both unattractive and unaffordable.
Nevertheless, it was obvious that Abingdon was not the only player in this competition: Leonard Lord asked a similar question of Donald Healey, and it was fairly common knowledge inside BMC that Austin Engineering at Longbridge had been dabbling with ideas for a small sports car for several years. Underpinning all this thinking was the concept of the so-called ‘buzz box’ – in effect a modern interpretation of the original pre-war Austin Seven as a low-cost car for the masses.
With little evident enthusiasm, Abingdon entered into the fray with a project for a lower cost MGA under the code EX 195. Fitted with a single 1¾in SU carburettor, Morris Minor propshaft and Austin A30 steering box, the exercise began in November 1955. The following year, to keep up the pretence of enthusiasm under BMC management’s gaze, EX 195 was reworked to take a 950cc ‘A’ series engine in place of the single carburettor 1498cc ‘B’ series engine. Cliff Bray, working in MG’s Development shop, told the author that this car was built with a 9.41 rear-axle ratio, and that it achieved a totally underwhelming maximum speed of just 75mph (120km/h).
Nevertheless, work on EX 195 continued even after the imminent arrival of the Austin-Healey Sprite – which, it had been decided, should be built at Abingdon – was a foregone conclusion. In his notebook, Cliff Bray recorded that the MGA Utility Rebuild (‘A’ series EX 195) was built between 27 March and 24 April 1958. This version featured 8in front brakes, 7in rear brakes, an 11.41 Riley 1.5 differential, special propshaft and a Magnette gearbox. Entries were made in the register as late as 1959 for the ‘cheap’ MGA, which was even tried with smaller (13in diameter) wheels – but in the end the idea was never pursued.
With most MG sales being to North America, where the MGA was already regarded as a ‘small car’, there seemed little evidence that the USA had any desire for a tiny-engined MGA with less, rather than more performance than the standard car. Jim O’Neill once told the author that despite efforts to cheapen the components, the cost saving for EX 195 was something under £50. EX 195 stayed alive for as long as it did primarily because Abingdon were aware that the Healeys were working on what would become the Sprite, and as Thornley put it, ‘…we had no intention of being left out of the race.’ However, once the Austin-Healey Sprite appeared in May 1958, the cases for EX 188 and EX 195 evaporated. They were not mourned at Abingdon.
At the other end of the spectrum to the ‘cheapened’ MGA were experiments with larger engines. Evidence of this comes from entries in the Abingdon Development Department work schedules, which include references to both a ‘1700cc’ MGA and, even more intriguingly, a 2.2-litre version.
As noted above, the 1700 appears in the EX-Register against ‘EX 191/270’ (dated 12 August 1958) in the context of ‘proposed air cleaner for 1700cc MGA’, and just under a year later in Alec Hounslow’s Development Department Report (‘DDR’) No. 134 of 13 June 1959 as ‘Reference DDW No. 495 – MGA 1700 Engine – cancelled on Mr Enever’s instruction’.
One of Syd Enever’s efforts at creating a facelift for the MGA Coupé, with a squarer roof profile, an enlarged boot and a stepped two-tone colour scheme. This model by Harry Herring was to one-sixteenth scale.
ENEVER FAMILY
A similar fate befell another exercise to contemplate a 2.2-litre MGA; the author has been unable to find more information, beyond its cancellation (the reference is DDR No. 172, dated 14 July 1958: ‘The 2.2 Litre engine has been installed in the Twin Cam Engine and checked by Mr Enever. The mock-up has now been stripped down, and the parts, with the exception of the engine and clutch, returned to their respective Stores), but there was a 2199cc Austin engine which had been used in the Austin A70 and was later adapted for the Austin Gipsy (BMC’s answer to the Land Rover, and in production from 1958 to 1968), and it seems possible that this was the powertrain in question; certainly its final drive was of some interest to Syd Enever and his team when they were exploring options for independent rear suspension on first the MGA and later the MGB.
Richard Harvey acquired this very well built ‘two-plustwo’ MGA, which looks about as close to a factory-built prototype as possible. However, it is believed to be a very well executed private conversion.
RICHARD HARVEY
Ever since before the war, MG had maintained a relationship with various British police forces, and so it was hardly a surprise when the MGA found favour with some of them. In order to adapt the car to the practical needs of a patrol car, the factory developed a series of sensible modifications, an obvious example being a beefedup electrical system, including a larger dynamo. The changes were recorded under a dedicated code ‘EX 194’, which comprised some seventeen entries. Despite a two-seater sports car not being the most obvious candidate as a police car, forces known to have taken MGAs included Bristol Police District, Glamorganshire Constabulary in Cardiff, Lancashire Police District, Northumberland Police, Oxford City Police and Selkirk Police District.
A Ford Zephyr of the Lancashire Police Force dwarfs the contemporary MGA patrol car. 596 KTB, one of fifty-five MGAs used by this force, had chassis number 70931 and was supplied in Old English White with red trim and a grey hood (just ten were delivered in this colour scheme; most were black).
AUTHOR’S COLLECTION
John Thornley pondered the idea of a slightly longer MGA chassis as the possible basis of a ‘two-plus-two’ open MGA – which as an alternative could, he suggested, become the basis of an open-topped Riley. The concept was given the EXRegister code of EX 189, and the front sheet of the register section also made reference to the car as the ‘four-seater version of MGA – MGE’. Although a well-built four-seater MGA is known to exist (see photo previous page), there is no hard evidence to prove that this was related to EX 189.
One of the obvious deficiencies of the MGA – especially as the basis of a touring car – was the lack of luggage capacity in the boot, and it was obvious that any larger MGA – such as EX 189 – would have needed a larger luggagecarrying capability. Models by Harry Herring were built showing a bulkier tail for the MGA – whether two-seater or two-plus-two – but aesthetically the effect was not an elegant one, and the rear end of the MGA remained largely untouched (other than the tail lighting) until the end of production in 1962.
Syd Enever had an eye for fashionable trends and no doubt his trips to the USA as part of the EX 179 and EX 181 record-breaking bids only served to heighten his awareness of contemporary design in the US domestic automotive industry. As well as the tendency towards larger bodies and ever more prominent tail fins, bulkier chrome-plated bumpers and other protuberances, an obvious feature that was assuming growing popularity by the second half of the 1950s were two- or even three-tone colour schemes.
MG draughtsman Peter Neal was tasked with producing these two-tone ideas for the MGA by Syd Enever; neither really worked.
PETER NEAL
Peter Neal was asked to take one of his sketches further, with this airbrushed sketch…
PETER NEAL
...and here is the end result, photographed at Abingdon. Thankfully the idea went no further.
ENEVER FAMILY
The principle made its way across the Atlantic, too, and as well as the obviously American-influenced Fords and Vauxhalls, a growing number of models in the ‘BMC’ family soon sported two-tone colour schemes. Closer to home for Enever was the emergence of the ‘Varitone’ version of the MG ZB Magnette. This prompted him to look at ideas to add some similar excitement to the MGA, and as well as the sketches by Peter Neal and the Harry Herring models seen here, at least one full-size roadster was converted with a chrome trim splitting the upper and lower half of the MGA body into different colours.
In the end it was obvious that the curvaceous lines and petite nature of the MGA body styling did not lend itself to such treatment, and the concept was abandoned; however, when it came to the MGA’s successor, a horizontal trim line was introduced, running on both flanks from head to tail lamps, and although no MGBs were ever offered in production with two-tone colour schemes, early concept sketches showed the possibility.
Having started the ball rolling with ‘MGA’ (or, more correctly, ‘MG Series MGA’), thoughts inevitably soon turned to the next projects in the sequence – the MGB, MGC and so on. History has recorded the production applications of these names (as well as MGF, of course), but back in the mid-1950s, the first ideas were as follows:
MGA: What began as DO 1062, EX 182 and EX 191.
MGB: The initial suggested name for EX 187, the MGA Twin Cam – rendered pointless when the production car ended up looking very similar to the standard MGA. Of course the ‘MGB’ name was eventually used on a production car (ADO 23) built between 1962 and 1980.
MGC: A Syd Enever idea for a larger, 6-cylinder MG sports car or sports coupé, which never progressed beyond a paper concept. From August 1957, EX 210 was, in this vein, a slightly later ‘2.6-litre MG (four-seater sports)’. The much later production MGC (ADO 52) was a 3-litre 6-cylinder offshoot of the MGB, built between 1967 and 1969.
MGD: EX 188, listed as a ‘New Midget with A30 engine – the MGD’. This was in essence something that was known in and around Abingdon and Cowley as the ‘Buzz Box’, and formed MG’s entry into the design process, which eventually resulted in the ADO 13 Austin-Healey Sprite.
MGE – EX 189, listed as a ‘four-seater version of the MGA – MGE’.
The story of what eventually became the MGB began, naturally enough, within the orbit of its predecessor. Although the definitive MGB, ADO 23, had its roots in another monocoque concept, EX 214, the process of finding a successor to the MGA actually began with an assumption that MG would stick to a separate chassis frame; indeed John Thornley and Syd Enever even went on record as saying such in one of the former’s internal memos. The project code for this concept was EX 205, and the first styling models – Harry Herring ones as well as full size – were developed by Jim O’Neill and apprentice draughtsman Peter Neal, working to a brief from Syd Enever.
The Frua MGA was photographed outside their premises by its makers, Carrozzeria Pietro Frua, before it was shipped from Italy to England; as built it had a neat and simple removable hardtop.
FRUA FAMILY/STEFAN DIERKES
In the midst of this process, Peter Neal’s sketches were taken by Enever to show BMC Deputy Chairman George Harriman, who decided to send an MGA chassis to the Italian coach-building concern of Frua, with a commission to build a one-off prototype. According to Don Hayter, Harriman had been to one of the European motor shows
... in Switzerland, or Italy, probably – and he had a look at their cars, and said that what we wanted was something ‘better and newer for the US market’. Of course the Yanks kept on screaming at us for something new, so we knew this anyway. So Harriman said to Frua ‘Do me a car’, and we got the message to send them a chassis. So we shipped an MGA chassis out in a crate, and the Frua-bodied car came back; nobody went out there with it.
The Frua MGA, door open, as photographed by the Frua company before shipment to their client.
FRUA FAMILY/STEFAN DIERKES
The interior of the Italian car featured generously upholstered seats and vast areas of red-piped cream leather; perhaps more Maserati than MG?
FRUA FAMILY/STEFAN DIERKES
The resultant car, resplendent in red with a white leather interior, was a striking creation with a larger, more modern (for 1957) shape than the MGA, but of a style more like an upmarket Maserati, or perhaps elements of the imminent Aston-Martin DB4. It was, to many eyes, a beautiful job, but perhaps not really an MG – and certainly rather ‘overbodied’ for a car with a 1.5-litre 4-cylinder engine.
Contemporary photographs from the surviving Frua family archive dating from April 1957 show that as built, the Frua MGA came with either a white folding roof or a neat close-coupled white hardtop, although by the time it was photographed back in the UK it had also acquired a neat fastback coupé roof as an option. When MG weighed the prototype, they found that it was heavy – even allowing for the fact that hand-built prototypes with lots of lead-loading and excesses of luxurious trimmings often are rather portly – and this helped sway the design team’s views towards the monocoque method of construction, cutting out some of the duplication between chassis and bodysill structures. Hayter says: ‘It weighed about two tons – it was massive, completely unfeasible, and it wouldn’t go – I think they drove it on the road only once or twice...’
The MG drawing office nevertheless drew up a general arrangement drawing of the Frua car – referred to in MG parlance as ‘EX 205/2.R’ – with the drawing dated 20 June 1957. The task was undertaken by Don Hayter, who told the author:
I got to measure and draw that body so that we had got a record of it, as Frua didn’t send any drawings with it. The drawing survives at Gaydon. I’ve still got the folder with all the dimensions in it that I recorded when I measured them off the Frua car. Harry Herring did some wood formers for me to use that fitted in places so I could produce a proper layout.
A photograph taken in the 1960s of Harry Herring’s model of the Frua MGA.
ENEVER FAMILY
Harry Herring also made a model using the drawings.
The Nuffield Exports Board, meanwhile, considered at their meeting of 10 July 1957 the following bond: ‘It was resolved that the seal of the Company be affixed to a Bond with the Commissioner of H. M. Customs and Excise in the sum of £13,000 with reference to the temporary importation of one MGA car chassis fitted with Italian prototype body.’
Pictured in April 1957 at ‘Parco di Valentino’ in Turin, not far from the Frua premises, prior to despatch.
FRUA FAMILY/STEFAN DIERKES
This superb 1957 Kodachrome image of the Frua MGA comes from Syd Enever’s own record of this impressive car, soon after delivery.
ENEVER FAMILY
Harry Herring’s model of the Frua car – EX 205/2 – survives at Gaydon.
AUTHOR
Once the job of the Frua MGA had been done, BMC had no further use for the prototype; the bond had effectively granted the company a temporary import licence, without the payment of duty based on its purchase cost – which of course was considerable. There being little or no sentiment in the car business, and no point in re-exporting a one-off concept that had to remain secret, BMC decreed that the Frua prototype should be cut up with an acetylene torch whilst a local customs and excise officer, Mr Fishpool, looked on.
Jim O’Neill told the author that the hardtop survived, it being reasoned no doubt that the customs and excise man need not know of its existence, and it was used as inspiration for some of Abingdon’s own efforts at EX 205. Now even that has gone, the only evidence of how it looked being the Harry Herring model, which survives in the British Motor Museum collection.
Peter Neal was tasked with sketching a version of the Frua car with a different nose, based on that of Jim O’Neill’s original EX 205/1.R, called EX 205/3.R – but in the end EX 205 was abandoned in favour of another project – EX 214, of June 1958 – which led eventually to the MGB. But that is another story...
According to Don Hayter, Syd Enever dallied with no fewer than three types of suspension in the MGA:
There was the obviously conventional one, there was a trailing arm and coil spring – which is what the MGB was originally going to have – and we also did an inclined angle swinging arm with a fixed differential in the middle – rather like the Porsche, although before they used it (not that we were the first to consider this idea). That chassis was built, and I remember it lay on the bank outside the drawing office for years, rusting away.
One of the MG factory Development Department Reports (DDR No. 145, dated 18 February 1958) includes an update on progress with what had been given the DDW number of 225 (‘MGA with coil spring rear suspension’) to the extent that ‘the parts have been made and fitted to LJB 370 and will be put to test as soon as possible’.
This very rounded coupé is a Harry Herring model of EX 205, a proposal for what would have been in effect a rebodied MGA. Note the slightly heavy grille and two-tone bodycolour treatments – themes that evidently appealed to Syd Enever at the time.
AUTHOR
Hayter recalls that Roy Brocklehurst had a nasty incident in the MGA with the trailing arm suspension: ‘He took it out with Tony Felmingham and they flipped it coming down from Fox Hill. It flicked over in the air and laid upside down across the ditch, with roof untouched. They opened the doors and fell out into the ditch – no seat belts in those days of course! Then they hitched a lift back to the factory in a passing Royal Mail lorry!’
Peter Neal adds that this car was also the MG Development MGA ‘LJB 370’ and the incident took place in March 1959: ‘Apparently one of the rear wheels got caught up in the rear wheel arch on full bump and sent the car cartwheeling into a ditch.’ According to Neal, ‘LJB 370’ was rebuilt and back out on test at MIRA inside of two weeks...
The idea of a special rear end for the MGA – either fully independent or with a De Dion axle – eventually died a death, not least because of a lack of suitable components from the BMC cupboard – and although the concept was revived for the MGB, similar challenges led to the retention of a conventional leaf-sprung live axle in the MGA’s successor. By the start of the 1960s, the development story of the MGA was drawing inevitably to a close, and the future of the MG sports-car story lay in a worthy successor...
This model represents EX 214 – an early representation of the monocoque sports-car concept that would soon develop into the ADO 23 MGB.
AUTHOR
Fast forward to 2017, and this is the winning design in a competition organized by SAIC, the present owners of the MG brand, to design a new MG sports car for 2025. The young designer Li Qin, of China’s Tsinghua University, chose the MGA as his inspiration...
SAIC MOTOR