Peter Rhodes on a motoring centenary, a car with self-opening doors and what can we do with the Conservative Party?
Things to do on a rainy day. Off to Warwick where volunteers from the British Motor Museum give a presentation entitled “100 Not Out – The Story of MG.”
In a packed conference room, gentlemen of a certain age purr with pleasure as the screen fills with P-Types, T-Types, MGBs, and all the other slung-low sweet chariots we have coveted and adored from 1924 to 2024.
If you're one of those who grumble darkly about today's Chinese-built MGs, it seems the entire century-long history of the marque is riddled with similar moaning about the latest model not being the real thing. It's got a roof? Can't be a proper MG, and so on...
My membership of the MG clan lasted from 1968 to 1971 with my first car. It was a beautiful British racing green 1938 MG TA, built on a frame of English ash so flexible that the doors flew open when you went round bends. My first accessories were a pair of tower bolts to keep them closed. Those were happy, hairy days but after many skids and several breakdowns, I was only too glad to sell my TA for £100, half what I had paid for it.
In the decades that followed, for all sorts of financial reasons, MG withered until in 2006 it passed into Chinese ownership. It goes without saying that thousands of MG fans muttered that the Chinese couldn't built a proper one.
However, the chaps from the British Motor Museum seemed upbeat for the future. In China, production of cars bearing the famous MG octagon badge now outstrips the entire UK motor industry. One of Shanghai's latest convertibles was on show at Warwick and it's a beauty. (Although, not having little bolts to keep the doors shut, it can't be a proper MG).
While we fans were celebrating the history of MG, the Conservative Party, up the A4141 in Brum, was bereft of ideas, desperately short of talent and busy paving the way towards its next election defeat. What is to be done when an old and struggling national institution seems to have no vision for its future? I suppose we could always sell it to the Chinese.
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