John Langley said, in the Sunday Times of January 26^th, that BL intended to introduce an MG version of the Mini-Metro next April. Those that didn’t stop to think immediately expostulated and all sorts of people for whom, it would appear, BL can do no right – and maybe never will again – said what a dreadful thing it was. Let’s just take a quiet look at it all.

The Abingdon plant is shut. Nobody could be more distressed by that than me. But no amount of carping – or anything else – will alter it. We all said our piece before the final blow fell, but no good purpose will be served keeping on about it.

Now there is a suggestion that there should be another MG. Of course there is. We spent some eighteen months, from Black Monday onwards, saying how important MG was to BL and the Nation. We can’t expect BL not to pursue the market.

What sort of a car, then, is the new MG to be? To be true to the past, it must, in Cecil Kimber’s terms, offer Safety Fast. In my terms it must, in addition, offer ‘the greatest amount of fun for he minimum amount of money’…… It is the ‘minimum amount of money’ bit which determines the answer to the question.

I am on record as having said that I think the quantity-produced open sports car has had its day. Any vehicle, to get anywhere near the bottom of it’s price bracket, must be made in large quantities; the world market for ‘sports cars’ is not so large; so, the sports car, to be low in price, must incorporate gear-box, axle, running-gear which are already in quantity production for bread-and-butter vehicles; it has always been thus. But now, the economics are such that the designer must use produced panels – perhaps a complete body – too; and there aren’t many quantity produced open cars to choose from!

I well remember how the first estimate for the tooling of the MGB frightened me stiff and I said then, all those years ago, that it would be the last sports car to have a pressed body. (A lot of people thought the TR7 was going to prove me wrong but it failed not least because of exorbitant capital cost).

For a new MG to be a saloon should not offend purists, either. There is plenty of precedent – Ks, Ls, Ys and Zs, not to mention ADO 9s, ADO 38s and 1100s – and very good cars some of them were. Yes, I know they were the minority in the MG range, but times have changed, as I have tried to explain above.

Anyway, this all makes the Metro a logical choice as the basis for a new MG. And what’s more, it’s British and not Japanese!

Remember that taking a Morris and turning it into a thing called and MG is where we came in, in 1923. All we have to do is pray they make a good job of it. The potential is there.

Finally, I had better let you MG buffs into a dark little secret. Years ago, if Sidney Enever and I had had our way, there would have been a series of Mini-MGs – and therefore perhaps no Mini-Coopers!! But the powers-that-were thought otherwise. And you are not going to get me, at this late date, to say wether I think they were right or wrong!

(Note: For those who may not know John Thornley was the original Secretary of the MG Car Club in 1930, and later, in 1952, became the MG Car Company’s General Manager. Definitely an MG authority!)