This is a newspaper article from yesterday's Atlanta
Journal/Constitution.
David Lynes, Woodstock, GA
73 Midget
78 MGB
Quote:
British MG TC started romance with sports cars
By Bill Vance
I’ll never forget the first time I saw an MG TC. It was displayed on an
elevated platform at a Toronto automobile dealership called British Cars
and Vans. It was 1949, and we were in Toronto picking up a new Standard
Vanguard for our dealership. I had read about the MG in Tom McCahill’s
Mechanix Illustrated column, and now actually seeing one made a powerful
impression on this young teenager.
Suddenly, the Vanguard looked round and dumpy, and even the Triumph 2000
Roadster in the British Cars and Vans showroom seemed like a baroque
caricature of a classic. I only had eyes for this low, red thing
perched on tall wire wheels, with its wind-shield folded flat and its
rear-hinged doors cut down to let your arms work that great vertical
steering wheel.
I was allowed to sit in the driver’s seat—all TCs were right-hand
drive—and gaze over the long, slender hood. On the instru-ment panel was
a new kind of gauge, some-thing called a tachometer that measured
crankshaft revolutions, and on the floor was the shifter for a
four-speed transmission. My world had changed forever.
As it turned out, its impact on others was no less seductive. The
English MG TC, with its spare, angular lines, became the quintes-sential
sports car. When people asked what a sports car was, which they often
did in those days, the MG was always the first example given; none other
was necessary.
The TC model was a continuation of the TA and TB Midget models built
before World War II. North American automakers weren’t the only ones to
give us warmed-over prewar designs following the war.
Even by the modest standards of 1940s domestic automotive engineering,
the MG TC wasn’t much of a car. Its 76-cubic-inch (1.25-liter)
four-cylinder engine had to scream its little heart out to develop much
speed or acceleration. And it was questionable how much velocity one
would want to build up, given the marginal brakes and archaic
leaf-spring suspension, not to mention the super-sensitive steering. But
expert drivers soon learned to cope.
And don’t bother about luggage; MG pas-sengers traveled light, not by
choice, but out of necessity because trunk space was con-fined to a
small bin behind the seat. If you wanted to take more, you bolted a
luggage rack on the back. Its stiff suspension gave it a pretty jarring
ride. It didn’t keep you warm in the winter or dry in the rain.
But carping about ride quality, luggage space and weather protection is
to miss the essential point of the TC. It was not to haul luggage. It
was not to ride smoothly, or keep you warm in the winter, or dry in the
rain. It was just to have good, impractical fun dash-ing along a curving
road. And people did just that. They raced them and rallied them. They
formed sports car clubs and found a kind of car camaraderie they had
never known before. Cars could really be fun.
Although a few MGs had found their way to North America before the war,
the marque didn’t really become known here until after-ward. It began
when some returning service-men brought them back. By 1947, distributors
began to get established, and MGs started arriving in more quantity.
McCahill, pioneering car tester for Mechanix Illustrated, deserves a
good deal of the credit for initially making the MG known in North
America.
In his January 1949 column, McCahill enthused about its road-holding and
related how he had almost pulled the guts out of his 1948 Mercury trying
to keep up with a TC on a trip up the coast of California.
McCahill reported that while the top speed of the MG was only 79 to 82
mph, which could be topped by several American cars, its supe-rior
road-holding made it almost impossible to beat on most roads. Its
zero-to-60-mph time was about 20 seconds.
He called the TC a “gentleman of distinc-tion ... a stroke of smart
styling genius” and said it “looked sporty, expensive and intrigu-ing as
a night on the Orient Express.”
Thus the MG TC started the sports car movement in North America.
Eventually, of course, the MG had to be updated. The TC evolved into the
softer-sprung, quieter TD model in 1950, then the transitional TF, which
was neither classic nor modern in its styling. Finally, the 1956 MG A
made the complete change to a modern envelope design, followed by the
1963 MG B. But the TC lives on in the hearts of many enthusiasts.
Bill Vance’s book. “Reflections on Automotive History,” is available
from Eramosa Valley Pub-lishing, Box 370, Rockwood, Ontario, Canada, NOB
2KO. Soft cover $l8.50; hard cover $28.50 (add $4.00 shipping).
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