MG Car Club expands

Club manager Julian White would be with me shortly, I gathered, when I turned up at Kimber House, the Cemetery Road clubhouse overlooking land once occupied by the MG factory. He was with a member from Idaho, the proud owner of an MGB and an MGT, I was told.

“They come from all over the world,” he told me when we were eventually ensconced comfortably in ther board room. “And it is not just the English speaking world that has a passion for the marque either; Germany is big, as are Holland and Italy. Now of course there are Chinese members too.”

The “of course” in that sentence was there because (of course) the Chinese company Nanjing Automobile Corporation bought the famous MG name in 2007. Mr White added: “The Chinese love the fact that we cherish the past at MG, but they find it strange, because there is really no culture of used cars in China at all.”

That is far from true in the developed western world, where many of us seem to see the business of keeping the past alive, even in zombie-like form, as a kind of mission. For instance, last year 400 MGs turned up at Windsor for the Heritage Run. “Prince Charles once had an MGC,” Mr White said. And there, apparently, is the point. Practically everyone, according to Mr White. has either owned an MG or knows someone who has. In my case I soon found myself wittering on about, of all things, my mother’s first car: a Midget with a duck-billed rear-end, known as the “Midge” and built circa 1930, in which she used to drive to her London University college in Regent’s Park.

As I gassed on about a car I never saw, Mr White, whose first car was an MGB, smiled indulgently. He had heard it all before. He said: “We call those early MGs the three Ms: Midget, Magnum, and Magnet. This passion for all things MG is particularly strong in Abingdon, where so many people either worked themselves, or are the sons or daughters of people who did, or know people who did.”

Now the club, which has only six full-time employees, has 11,000 UK members — and some 35,000 worldwide — with 1,264 living in the old Abingdon works area. Members pay £40 a year each — and revel in the past. They receive the monthly club magazine Safety Fast and are invited to meetings twice a year at Gaydon.

In addition, archivist Peter Neal, who was a draughtsman at MG for 30 years, has records of individual cars that are of great value to MG owners.

Pushing out the 1953 MG YB for the photograph above (like the rest of us it was reluctant to work in the frost after its Christmas break) the club member pushing alongside me pointed out in loving tones its finer points: the octagonal dials — reflecting the famous MG badge — on the wooden dashboard, for instance. I learned that even the oil dip-stick is octagonal. “It’s these details we love,” he said.

We were pushing the car along the road outside Kimber House, that once led to the MG factory, workplace for 1,300 people in its heyday. The old administration block of the factory, which was operational from 1930-1980, still stands — though now it is a timber-clad block of flats called Larkhill House, set amid a sea of new houses. Pushing the car into place, we momentarily held up one of the block’s residents driving a distant relative of the MG, a modern Mini built in Cowley.

The MG company came into being way back in 1924 after Cecil Kimber had become sales manager at Morris Garages, a company owned by William Morris (later Lord Nuffield). Mr Kimber persuaded the then Mr Morris to found a company dedicated to making more exciting cars than, say, the best-selling Bull-nosed Morris he already produced, and in 1929- 30 the factory in Abingdon was dedicated to doing just that.

Mr Kimber, who lived in a house at 69 Oxford Road, Abingdon, where the Boundary House pub now stands, was the driving force behind the company’s early success, and was until 1935 allowed to go his own way. That year, though, Mr Morris sold MG to Morris Motors in Oxford and Mr Kimber found himself accountable to the main board.

He became increasingly disillusioned with his role and during the Second World War he annoyed his bosses to such an extent that they sacked him. He took on aircraft contract work without their permission.

He was killed in a freak rail accident in 1945 near Kings Cross station, London. He was one of only two passengers to die in a collision caused by the train skidding on newly laid track.

After his sudden departure the management was taken over in 1952 by John Thornley, after whom the new conference suite at the MG Car Club is being named. From 1982 to 1990, the MG name was applied to re-badged and tuned Maestros, Montegos and Metros built in Longbridge; a move which disappointed some fans.

Now, however, MG buffs still have the MGF to enthuse over — the mid-engined car reflects the shape of the earlier MGB and MGC.

Looking at the old MG YB of 1953 vintage, left to the club by a member who died last year, I realised that the company had produced saloons as well as sports cars.

Mr White, 52, who spent much of his working life in car sales before becoming redundant and landing this job last year, admitted: “There are a few people who think MGs should be sports cars.”

Nostalgia. Some say it is not what it used to be, but at Kimber House, at the very gates of the now vanished factory, the business of keeping the past alive is thriving. As the club communications officer Chris Seaward said: “The club is now almost the only tangible link in Abingdon left, and we’re proud to celebrate its 80th birthday.”