The culture of MG

Something about MG brings out the best in people. Applause for winners at the Lincolnshire Centre MG Car Club’s concours wasn’t just polite. It had warmth. Classic MGs cover a wide spectrum. This was no Hurlingham with cars costing millions, nor a Bentley or Jaguar club affair with cars at hundreds of thousands. MGs can reach big money of course, yet ever since Cecil Kimber poshed up Morrises to make world-class sports carS, MGs have been unique. They are classy without being class-conscious. Some cars are classics because there weren’t many. MGs became classics even though there were lots.

Yesterday at the Concours I didn’t meet any owners who talked about what their cars were worth. Well, with one exception because I asked him. Not many seem to restore or refurbish MGs because of what they’ll fetch at Bonhams’ or how they’ll look at Goodwood, although some MG folk can be just as arcane about originality. The immaculate 1964 MGB had a notice in the window detailing its restoration to correctitude strictly in accordance with Anders Clausager’s Original MG book. It was apparently one of the last in the series with original recessed door handles and a 36-rivet grille where all the uprights were individually attached to the chrome surround. Now, there’s detailing.

A passing spectator wondered if its light blue was the best colour for a B and I tried to remember the colour of the first MGB I drove. This was a press car 523 CBL for the first official road test published in The Motor on 24 October 1962. I drove it from London to Charterhall, the Scottish Borders track, the weekend before the test was published, the badges taped over because it was still officially “secret”. Jackie Stewart was racing, probably FSN1 the Dumbuck Jaguar E-type and I parked the MG in a quiet corner of the paddock where it immediately became a focus of interest.

I’m not good with colours; I seem to recall it was blue. I had had an MGA, which a B could never match for precision and the 1962 test that I compiled (it was essentially a committee job by road test staff under Charles Bulmer and Joe Lowrey) now seems a little uncertain about the handling. It makes a lot of the ride and the stiffness (we’d now say over-engineering) of the body shell. “The rack-and-pinion steering has been freed from kick-back without flexibility or much frictional damping being perceptible, yet feel of the road is retained.” Faint praise I think.

Another car at the concours was MG 1199 (below left), an 18/80 looking like the twin of the late Roger Stanbury’s splendid open 4-seater MG1200 in which I suffered many happy adventures. The wind in Roger’s 18/80 not only blew in your hair, it also blew up through holes in the floor, a legacy owed to neglect of a car he bought as a student.

My affection for MGs began when, like many an 11-year old, I read about it in Circuit Dust and Combat, borrowed from the public library. Romantic and colourful, these tomes by Alfred Edgar Frederick Higgs, or Barré Lyndon as he preferred to be known fired the imagination. It was entirely fitting that Lyndon made his name as a Hollywood scriptwriter after lending MGs a dramatic quality and a legacy of myth and legend beyond the realms of anything so prosaic as a car.

Book Review: First Principles: Keith Duckworth OBE

Here is an author betrayed, alas, by his publisher. Norman Burr packed the pages of this Official Biography with everything he ever knew about Keith Duckworth, Cosworth Engineering and anything connected. Sadly they fail to join up into a coherent narrative. This is the first time I have read a biography of somebody I knew quite well, ending up liking him rather less than I did before. His personal life was a mess. His quirky aphorisms, to which we were well accustomed are made to look trite, sometimes absurd. His achievements are scarcely analysed in a way you would expect of an author described as a technical journalist. The book has the sense of being hurriedly put together without a plan. A good editor would have excised all topical references to “at the time of writing” as more appropriate to a magazine feature than a full length book. The author should have been told to write something better. No need for a whitewash; like many an engineering genius Duckworth must have been a nightmare to work with, but half a century after some of his most notable achievements, an opportunity to reflect on them has probably been lost.

Burr has done his homework. A lot of the material was certainly a surprise to me and not just over the subject’s tangled relationships. Cosworth’s creation is well narrated with the aid of creditably acknowledged references to Graham Robson’s 1990 book Cosworth The Search for Power. But its concentration tails off with long passages of what Tom said to Jim and Dick to Harry, fascinating to insiders like me who knew the Toms Dicks and Harrys but there is no flesh on the bones of the individuals. It is difficult to follow. The crucial role and the skill of main players like Walter Hayes and Colin Chapman is widely covered but they have been well covered before not least by Walter Hayes and Colin Chapman. Real portraits are missing. People appear and disappear throughout, and lots of minor characters flash up as names without any explanation at all.

Most of the engineering descriptions are clear. They would have benefitted from more diagrams among the wide-ranging illustrations that range from holiday snaps to Dame Kiri Te Kanawa (wrongly spelt on the caption) at the launch of the 24v Ford Scorpio, and too many microlights. One might also have hoped that a technical writer would know the difference between the Royal Engineers (RE) and the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (REME).

First Principles: The Official Biography of Keith Duckworth OBE by Norman Burr. Foreword by Sir Jackie Stewart OBE ISBN 978-1-845846-28-5 £35.00 Veloce Publishing

ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER ANNIVERSARY

Like buses, you wait sixty years for an anniversary and two come along at once. Three if you count the British Empire Trophy and the Scottish Rally in last week’s blog. The third is the 1955 British Grand Prix at Aintree, the first grand prix I watched and the first that Stirling Moss won. Kept the programme. I kept the programmes of almost all the hundred or so grands prix, as well as Le Mans, sports car races, rallies and other events I covered as a journalist. Some still have scribbled lap charts – not all accurate or even complete. Press rooms – if there were any - weren’t spoon-fed from television links.

The Aintree jacket looks quaint, with its wingless front-engined 250F Maserati and Daily Telegraph sponsorship. An early car, this was 2509, bought by Alfred Owen to gain experience of Formula 1 while BRM was in disarray. It only produced 208bhp instead of the claimed 240, and had Dunlop die-cast aluminium wheels when photographed at the Daily Express Silverstone with Peter Collins. There were four works and four private Maseratis in the grand prix, very nearly as quick as the Mercedes-BenzW196s, Collins was quickest of them but six retired. The Ferraris were outclassed. One finished three laps in arrears.

Mercedes-Benz filled the first four places in the race round the Grand National course, without the jumps; the road (built by Tarmac Ltd the greatest name in road construction according to the programme) I suppose now used by camera cars covering the horse racing. Karl Kling and Piero Taruffi drove the other Mercedes behind Moss and Fangio. A couple of times during the 90laps Fangio passed Moss but the 25 year old held the lead to the end, when Fangio closed up almost level when they took the chequered flag. That was what we had come to see. Moss fresh from his triumph in the Mille Miglia, Mercedes-Benz under Alfred Neubauer the best motor racing team in the world. The winner got £500 and the Daily Telegraph Trophy (value £100). Bonus thrill at Aintree. We SAW the Mercedes-Benz racing car transporter (below with Fangio) while we were trying to chat up some girls. The transporter was far more interesting. We were geeky.

Race day was hot. The race took three hours and we watched from the Steeplechase Enclosure furthest from the pits and grandstand, where standing room cost five shillings (25p) although my guess is that three of us in Ronnie Abbott’s TR2 got in on the combined admission and on-the-course parking for £1.10.0 (£1.50). Moss was on pole with a practice lap of 2.00.4 while right at the back of the grid alongside Collins in the Maserati Jack Brabham qualified his Cooper-Bristol mid-engined converted sports car on 2.27.4. Overtaken by the Mercedes’ within six laps, it took Brabham four years to become World Champion.

Sixty years to the day

Editors always disparaged anniversary journalism. Marking a memorial or a bicentenary was, they always told me, too easy. Still, it’s tempting. You need something to celebrate.

It is 200 years since Waterloo; 75 since Dunkirk; 70 since VE Day. It seems to me that celebrations are back. It is now 60 years since I first went to a grand prix. Sixty years since I got drenched watching Archie Scott-Brown win the British Empire Trophy. This week it is 60 years since my first big rally and I met Jim Clark. Anniversary journalism is fine.

British Empire Trophy? There was no embarrassment about the title in 1955 among those of us who had grown up with the Empire Exhibition in 1938. Oulton Park was reachable from Glasgow in Ronald Thomson Abbott’s Triumph TR2. Engaging, wildly comic medical student Ronnie wore thick glasses and spent much of his grant, or whatever you got at the time, bending MGG29 straight again following accidents. I was with him one night when he failed to line up flickering roadside gas lamps and crashed into heavy railings.

It was no big deal but the bumper fell off and the front wing was bent. At Oulton we willed Scott-Brown to win. We knew he came from Paisley. We never knew he was disabled but thought him a hero, and spent the day sheltering under a tree on the inside of Old Hall at Oulton Park.

Sixty years ago I was navigator in Frank Dundas’s Morgan Plus Four, car 103 on The Scottish Rally. Jim Clark was in cousin Billy Potts’s Austin-Healey 100, car 111 so we met often. You waited outside controls and wasted time. Rallying was gentler then and the road section ran at an easy pace. Bill Henderson, who became Autosport’s Scottish photographer recreated the scene at one of the tests, an approach road to Rest-and-be-Thankful with RSAC Secretary AK Stevenson in charge, as he usually was. Frank is the one with the jaunty cap; I have the clipboard. Billy Potts and Jim are in the Healey.

The Rally was based in Oban. The evenings were filled with talk about cars. And parties. It was a sun-drenched week. They all were when you were that age. Jim’s fellow-farmer Ian Scott-Watson, competing in the Ecurie Agricole team with Ronnie Dalglish (TR2) and Jimmy Somervail (Austin-Healey) burst a tyre and rolled his DKW the first day. Frank drove the Morgan beautifully in the decisive tests; we never lost marks on the road and finished fourth in the sports car class over 1.6litres behind Goff Imhof in a fierce 5.4litre Allard J2. There was a sprint on the runway of what is now Connell Airport near Oban that saw him doing well over 120mph. That was fast in 1955. I saved the programmes for 60 years.

New Age Aston Martin

Post-Clarkson car connoisseurs are different. Tyre-smoking and gas-guzzling will pass into history along with Jeremy. Profligacy is not what it was. Even Formula 1 has fuel economy and energy conservation. Realism will get into the supercar business and Aston Martin CEO Andy Palmer told Automotive News Europe plans for two new platforms, one a crossover. Aston will maybe refresh its supercar rather than replace it and use its technology link with Daimler to keep profitable.

“In the first century we went bankrupt seven times. The second century will be about making sure it doesn’t happen again.” The crossover, likely in 2019, was previewed at Geneva by the 4x4 DBX concept and could be built in America. Palmer was Nissan’s chief planner until last September and won’t lack advice on what to do next. 

So, here’s more. Everybody’s doing crossovers; last week’s Autocar was full of Range Rover lookalikes. They are flavour of the month/year/silly season. With the other platform Aston should do something else. 

Nowadays the wealthy (in the real world – I’m not talking about Middle Easterners) no longer want overwhelming. They have grown up. Understatement is In. Tyre-smoking, gas-guzzling etc is Out. They prefer premium-priced things to be exquisitely engineered, in good taste, huge V8s are so-o-o last century AC Cobra antiques. Even outgoing buyers are now tinged with greenery. A touch of retro is fine. Play up classic names. BMW and Audi thrive around 2 litres and a premium small sporty car like Aston used to make would prosper. Something up-market of MX5 would do nicely.

Aston Martin came late to big V8s. It made splendid 1500s and 2litres in its heyday (above). Even the engine designed (via Lagonda) by WO Bentley was a 2½litre that got bigger. Astons were tasteful, classy. Like Frazer Nashes. A 1930s Aston Martin Ulster did about 95mph in great style. A 1950s DB2 (top) would be hard-pressed to get much past 110. It was not until the 1960s 3.6 6-cylinder DB4 that you got 140mph, then 150 from the DB4GT with 6sec or so 0-60.That wouldn’t be difficult to match with a modern 2.0 turbo. Numbers would make it profitable. Unless Daimler vetoed it. Out this summer - new MX 5 (below).

Lunch with Enzo Ferrari

Fifty years ago next month (18 May 1965), we ate in the sunshine at the Ristorante Cavallino across the road from the factory in Maranello. He didn’t give interviews but I sent him a telegram, drove up to the big iron gate and rang the bell. Franco Gozzi came out and within the hour a keen young motoring hack had a scoop. 

It was years before the real reason came out. Covering Formula 1, I knew Franco Lini well. We were members of the International Racing Press Association (IRPA) and he was briefly a Ferrari team manager. In 1965 I had turned up with a freshly-minted bride, 19 years old, blonde, mini-skirted and wide-eyed. Gozzi knew his Enzo. Over lunch the 67-year old beamed, gave her a Ferrari silk scarf, made out he could not understand me and never took his eyes off her.

1965: BSN7C My Singer Chamois at the Ferrari factory

I had imagined Dr Gozzi, Ferrari’s long-suffering PA, must have heard of Town, Michael Heseltine’s new London glossy, with pages of different-coloured paper, very trendy in 1965. It paid me, as motoring correspondent, to drive from London in my Singer Chamois, - about as new as my wife. 

I didn’t tell Mr Ferrari that I had also arranged to meet Ferruccio Lamborghini. The upstart tractor manufacturer had just set up as a Ferrari rival in nearby Sant’ Agate Bolognese and I drove out in one of his new V12s. That was a scoop as well. 

I met Ferrari several times. We corresponded when the Italian press picked up things I had written. I framed one letter with the great man’s scratchy signature in coloured ink. Test days at Fiorano came later, when you avoided demonstration laps with Ferrari’s test drivers devoted to scaring visiting journalists.

1985: The roof's new and the FERRARI has been moved to the gatepost

 Scoop? Ferrari was inscrutable. He basked in it. In 1965 I had little idea of his history; I knew he could be difficult, irascible, he had a controversial lifetime in motor racing but I had only the haziest idea of the Scuderia Ferrari and the Alfa Romeo connections. The Fascist Party ticket he took out in 1934 never seemed to do him much good (or harm) and he was dismissive of the Commendatore title granted under Mussolini. Said he preferred Ingegnere, Engineer. Motor racing was his passion, even though he hardly attended races after 1945. The strain of watching his cars being driven, perhaps damaged, he told me, would be too much for him. He was lyrical about the virtues of the people of Modena, their gifts for engineering, for fast driving, without being modest enough to exclude himself from the eulogy. He was, after all, born there. And he was pleased to be regarded as a sort of father-figure in Maranello, where he had his “boutique” (“... please don’t call it a factory”) of low buildings round a gravelly courtyard, heavily shuttered with a massive steel fence and electric gate.

1986 Fiorano test day. Delighted to set identical lap time with Michael Scarlett. Slightly slower (but not much) than Ferrari test drivers.

 Best Ferrari apocrypha? A machine tool works in the war, Maranello was twice bombed and strafed by Allied aircraft. He once summoned Mike Parkes (1931-1977), English Ferrari driver son of Alvis chairman and distinguished engineer, when workmen discovered spent bullets in a roof space. Ferrari threw them on the desk. “I think these were from your side. You’d better have them back.”

1965 again. Engineered, as it happens, by Mike Parkes, rear-engined Singer near Maranello.