Car of the Week

Bruce Paterson: Dunning

The MGA was produced by MG from 1955 until 1962.The MGA replaced the MG TF 1500 Midget and represented a complete styling break from MG's earlier sports cars. Announced on 26 September 1955 the car was officially launched at the Frankfurt Motor Show. A total of 101,476 units were marketed through the end of production in July 1962, the vast majority of which were exported. 5869 cars were sold on the home market, and the MGA was replaced by the MGB.

The 1489 cc engine fitted with twin H4 type SU Carburettors produced 68 hp (51 kW) at first but was soon uprated to 72 hp (54 kW). Lockheed hydraulic drum brakes were used on all wheels. A coupe’ version was also produced, bringing the total production of standard MGAs to 58,750.

An early open car tested by British magazine, The Motor, in 1955 had a top speed of 97.8 mph (157.4 km/h) and could accelerate from 0–60 mph in 16.0 seconds. A fuel consumption of 26.7 miles per gallon (10.6 L/100 km; 22.2 mph) was recorded. The test car cost £844.

This example was originally built in 1960 as a left-hand drive and exported to the USA. In 1990 an enthusiast in Staffordshire bought it and imported it as a shell with the engine sitting in the cockpit. Intending to rebuild it himself back to concourse condition (right hand drive), he ran out of time. For the most part he used a local firm - Moorland Classic Cars to carry out the work. (Incidentally Moorland had carried out a lot of renovation work on a variety of classic cars for a Mr Bamford of JCB fame).

The car was eventually registered and put on the road in 2002 in concourse condition. The owner found he was using it less and less (his partner was definitely not into cars.) Eventually is was 'the car or me' situation, so he put it up for sale in 2007.

Bruce saw the advert and went down to Staffordshire to see it and have a test drive. He agreed a deal and bought it. In its concourse spec it was 1600cc with 4 speed gearbox but Bruce found that it was not entirely suitable for modern driving, it was not comfortable on the engine doing any more than about 50mph for a prolonged time.

Bruce discussed this with Moorland before collecting the car and they said they could quite easily change the gearbox to 5 speed using a Ford Sierra box with a special bell housing, solving the issue.

Over the next couple of years, Bruce started to think it would be nice to have a bit more power from the engine, so after quite a lot of research had a MG B series engine bored out to 1998cc and rebuilt with a fast road cam. That was carried out in 2007 and since then Bruce has enjoyed many years of happy motoring.