Andy Webster wrote:
>
> Dosen't "MG" stand for MORRIS GARAGES?
No. According to Cecil Kimber, M.G. stands for sports cars.
By the time The M.G. Car Company had been established (even before they
took over the old Pavlova Leather Works in Abingdon), Cecil Kimber's
original Morris dealership, The Morris Garages (which had sort of the
same relationship to Morris cars of the '20s that Ruf did to Porsches of
the '80s or Zagato to Alfas of the '50s), had long since been forgotten.
The initials were retained because his early products had been so
respected and popular that the car company he created had to use those
initials. In the late 1930s, Kimber was asked whether M.G. still stood
for Morris Garages, and he denied it vehemently. He was equally
vehement about his insistence that the name needed to have the dots in
it when it appeared in print (though obviously not when inside the
octagon).
So for all of my M.G.s since then, I've used Castrol in the sump because
of Capt. George Eyston, and dots in the name because of Cecil Kimber.
Oh, and of course, as long as I'm being punctilious, I must correct the
subject line. It shouldn't read "Morris vs British Leyland," it should
read "BMC vs. British Phlegmsucking Leyland."
Accuracy in names is critically important, don't you know...
--Scott Fisher
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