‘Save M.G.’ bid fails

Press, 17 July 1980, Page 11

‘Save M.G.’ bid fails

By

KEN COATES,

in London

It was ironic that “Motor” magazine awards for its “Design the M.G. of the 80s” should be announced on the same day as failure of a last-ditch bid to take over the building of the famous cars. While the magazine’s editor was praising “the sheer professionalism and astounding response” of entries from designers, British Leyland was bemoaning the prospect of a $2O million trading loss on the M.G. this year and announced that production will cease in October.

Apart from an unlikely eleventh hour injection of Japanese capital, the A s t o n-Martin-led consortium has been able to come up with only $1 million of the $2O million to $25 million needed. Background to the demise of the M.G. is a dramatic deterioration in sales, both in Britain and the United States, which takes 70 per cent of M.G. production. There are now 13,000 M.G.s stockpiled around the world, and even on a three-day week, the plant has still been producing 400 new car's every week.

The M.G. was bom out of the voracious will to succeed of one man and the expanding market for middle-class status symbols in Britain. The car first appeared as a souped-up Morris Oxford in 1923, when it won the Land’s End Rally. It went on to become an essential item for a carefree thrities chap, along iwth the blazer and the pipe. Its creator, William Morris, later Lord Nuffield, began his career as an apprentice in a bicycle firm in Oxford. He developed a motorcycle, moved into his own premises and was soon running sidelines in car repair, hire cars, a taxi service and a driving schooL

By 1910, he had produced his first car design and in 1913 he, made his first Morris Oxford as a competitor for the new Ford. The war distracted him into the manufacture of hand grenades and minesinkers, but afterwards, he returned to buy up competitors and suppliers alike, and create Morris Garages, the source of the famous M.G; initials. Morris’s Oxford agent, Cecil Kimber, developed successive new designs for the M.G., talcing the conventional 1929 Morris Minor,; lowering the siis : pension, and “hotting it up” into a 112 km/h twoseater, the Midget. > The Wolseley Hornet,

bought by Morris in 1926, was revamped and turned into the M.G. Magna and Magnette. Later the Midget became the T-type, and took the M.G. model round the world.

The car was reborn in the fifties as the M.G.A. and finally in the sixties as the M.G.B. FAST AND FLASH.

Ever optimistic, “Motor” magazine launched its competition in March, challenging enthusiasts to beat the experts and “create a brand-new M.G. of the future.”

Two of the first three prizes went to professional designers — one from Talbot and one from Austin Morris. The entries in the contest, which attracted 490 entries, will stand as a monument to what might have been.