MG V8 E-Book

David Knowles

• Herausgeber: Crowood
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 854

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

MG V8 tells in unprecedented detail the stories of some of the most powerful and exciting cars ever to wear the evocative MG octagon badge. Topics covered include: The story of each MG V8 model, from concept to development and production; Detailed information tables of notable cars and their chassis numbers for each model, plus special editions and colour charts; Interviews with the original MG V8 design and engineering teams; Background on development and testing work on each model; Rare input and insight from many of the outside suppliers and specialists who helped develop the cars; Information on sales and servicing literature, production changes, product placement, celebrity stories and much more. Illustrated with 400 pictures, including concept cars, design sketches and specially commissioned photography. For the first time, a complete and in-depth history of each of these remarkable MG V8 models. Covers concept through to development and production. Will be of great interest to all MG and motoring enthusiasts. Superbly illustrated with 400 colour photographs, many specially commissioned. David Knowles is one of the foremost MG historians of his generation.

Leseprobe

Copyright

First published in 2013 by The Crowood Press Ltd, Ramsbury, Marlborough, Wiltshire, SN8 2HR

www.crowood.com

This e-book edition first published in 2013

© David Knowles 2013

All rights reserved. This e-book is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

ISBN 978 1 84797 517 1

The publishers wish to thank the National Motor Museum and Tim Woodcock for their assistance with photography.

CONTENTS

Title PageCopyrightIntroductionAcknowledgements CHAPTER 1 ROOTS: THE MGB AND THE ROVER V8CHAPTER 2 MADE IN KENT: THE MGB COSTELLO V8CHAPTER 3 ABINGDON’S LAST SPORTS CAR: THE MGB GT V8CHAPTER 4 ROADSTER REVOLUTION: MGB V8 ROADSTERSCHAPTER 5 RETRO REVIVAL: THE MG RV8CHAPTER 6 PHOENIX POWERHOUSE: THE MG ZT 260CHAPTER 7 MODENA GARAGES: THE MG XPOWER SVIndex

INTRODUCTION

The British have long had a peculiar obsession with hybrid lightweight sporting cars, especially ones magically transformed by discarding an anaemic engine and putting in its place a much larger and more mellifluous unit of North American origin – preferably a V8. Sydney Allard was one of the first to embrace the concept, building his own specials before World War II using contemporary Ford and Lincoln V8s, whilst in early post-war America, a number of adventurous souls somehow managed to squeeze flat-head Ford V8s into the spindly frames of their MG TC and TD Midgets – with often alarming results.

More famous and professional was the alliance between the late Carroll Shelby and AC Cars of Thames Ditton, which begat the famous Cobra, marrying the chassis of a car normally powered by a Bristol six to a 289cu in Ford V8 (and later, an even scarier 427 version). Not all these transplants were successful, often because the chassis, suspension and related running gear had never been designed with such power in mind, but also because the sheer weight of what were usually quite substantial cast-iron engines played havoc with the handling; this might not always be a worry on a southern California drag strip, but it was certainly an issue on winding British country roads.

The traditional British automotive industry was at the same time a strange church, in particular at the ecumenical sports car fringes; understandably the orthodox needs of family-oriented passenger cars and the legacy of a curious UK horsepower tax which had influenced generations of British engine design (and which was only discontinued in 1947) meant that there was seldom enough money to create the more exotic power units with the higher outputs that sporting cars deserved.

When limited funds were made available, the result was not always an unqualified success – the MGA Twin Cam, lovely car in so many ways, being a typical example. The British Motor Corporation rarely looked outside its fence for powertrains – an unusual exception being the Rolls-Royce engines used in some Austin and Vanden Plas models – and so when MG was looking for a more powerful model to meet some of the demands from North America in particular, the company was forced to work with some of the raw material available – with perhaps predictable results.

As has quite often been the case, it took an outsider to show a better way for MG and to create a hybrid – very much in the spirit of those earlier cars – using a British MG body and an American-born V8 unit, but this time one that avoided the handicap of excessive weight. The formula proved so right that it established a new heritage and tradition – the MG V8 – which is celebrated in this book. Whether you believe that the independent or MG engineers deserve the credit is less important than the fact that the formula worked.

Whenever each of the factory-built models in this book has been taken out of production, commentators have tended to mutter pessimistically about the end of an era – but several times, as this book shows, they have eventually been proved wrong. Sitting here in 2012, it does seem that perhaps we may have finally seen the passing of an honourable tradition, and if so this is surely a golden opportunity to celebrate what may well prove to be a complete story.

However, there is a caveat: if history teaches us anything, it is that we should never be too ready to proclaim that we have reached the end of a particular journey, especially one which already has so many wonderful landmarks.

Roger Crocker was the author’s music master at school; both remember this car – photographed by the author in the school car park in 1977 – with some affection; if it survives, it is believed to be in Australia. Author

EPIPHANY

For me, the saga leading to this book begins with early exposure to MGB sports cars, regularly witnessed going out on test along the Marcham Road when, as a young boy, I passed the famous MG factory during family visits to relatives living in Abingdon and nearby Faringdon. Later, as an impressionable seven-year-old perched on the back seat of a brand new Mark I MGB GT being driven at speed through the narrow rock-lined roads of North Cornwall, came the forging of an enduring affection for the marque and that model in particular.

At my school in the 1970s, the staff contingent was joined by a new music master, Roger Crocker, who burbled into the staff car park in a deep yellow MGB GT V8, registration number ‘XAP 35’. From that point on, MG V8s became something of an obsession, as perhaps the detail in this book may explain.

Of course I was hardly the first person to be thus smitten, and am certainly not alone today, but in the course of my research for this book I had an excuse to track down the music master, whose subsequent career had led him to rise to become head of a regional music service. I wondered if his memories of ‘XAP’ had faded with the passage of the years; however, the car had left a lasting impression on him and I was not disappointed in his reply; he recalled wistfully:

I bought it in Brentford with that personalized plate, which I remember one policeman took a dislike to because it was not regulation. I eventually sold it for a good price, cash to an Australian, and parted company with bulging pockets of banknotes on London’s Embankment, where many of the Aussies used to ‘live’ in those days – and I believe it was shipped to Oz. I know the new owner left me with several parking tickets!

The V8 was neither Crocker’s first nor his last MG, but remains a favourite: ‘It was a good ’un I remember.’ One of the few failures was the water pump. ‘It was not that quick off the mark but fabulous on the open road – a real Porsche beater and 30 [miles] to the gallon being careful.’ Surprisingly good fuel economy is a recurring theme with the MGB GT V8. However, despite very good performance for its day, it was not quite a supercar; Crocker says of ‘XAP’:

It ran out of steam at around 125mph (on the track…) and only then did the Jensen pull away from me. It was good around the corners – unlike the MGC – and didn’t end up in telegraph poles because it had a lighter front end. I’m afraid I sold it to put a deposit on a house. It was a very sad day indeed.

I had to wait a few years until I got my first MG – an MGB GT – and then a few years more until I finally bought my first MGB GT V8, acquired in 1986. Still in my possession, that car remains an automotive pleasure in an increasingly anodyne world.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

No project of this magnitude can be undertaken without a great deal of assistance, and the author is indebted to many people who have helped over the years, stretching back to the time before the MG RV8 saw the first light of day. Sadly some of the people who so willingly gave their time and assistance are no longer with us – but they deserve equal billing in the long list that follows. I must also record special thanks and appreciation for the support of my publisher, Crowood. I am also grateful to the editors past and present of the various magazines which have reported on these great cars, for their help. Any errors or omissions are the responsibility of the author.

Keith Adams, AR Online;

Chris Allan, MG Car Club V8 Register;

Geoff Allen, (late) MG Car Club V8 Register historian and MG employee;

Mike Allison, former MG and later British Leyland engineer;

Greg Allport, brand management team for MG at time of RV8;

Peter Andrews, MG Rover designer of MG ZT 385 proposals;

Richard (Dick) Bartlam, designer on MG RV8;

Roy Belcher, former MG Abingdon (MGB & Midget) and Cowley (RV8) teams;

Roche Bentley, Secretary, MG Owners’ Club;

David Blume OBE, former president of Rover Japan;

John Bolt, MG Car Club V8 Register;

Rob Bonassisa, former Rover and Team Cowley member who raced the RV8;

David Boniface, Japan-based MG RV8 specialist;

Ed Braclik, Frontline Costello;

Rod Brayshaw, MG Car Company of New Zealand;

Simon Brewerton, MG RV8 electrical development team member;

John Brown, Intech Developments (RV8 rear lamp design);

Arthur Bullard, owner of MG ZT-T260 press car;

Robert Burden, former BL Leonia sales and marketing;

Pete Butler, Adder test team leader, exhaust, cooling, fuel systems and air-conditioning;

Ralph Cadman, Unicla International Ltd;

Peter Cambridge, suspension specialist involved with RV8 development;

Brian Cameron, former Rover Group and British Motor Heritage director;

Giordano Casarini, chief engineer for the Mangusta and MG XPower SV (now with Zagato);

Simeon Cattle, co-owner of ‘Eclectic Cars’;

Paul Chantry, former MG Rover manager;

Rakesh Chavda, designer on the MG X80 project, in particular the MG XPower SV;

Denis Chick, former Rover Group publicity manager;

Geoff Clark, former MG engineer;

Geoff Coley, owner of the MG RV8 formerly owned by actor Robert Lindsay;

Mike Cook, former BL Leonia sales and marketing;

Roger Cook, Costello enthusiast and owner;

Rob Corke, automotive lighting specialist who worked on the RV8;

Ken Costello, Costello Engineering;

John Cowan, MG RV8 production team;

Roger Crocker, former school teacher with a penchant for the MGB GT V8;

Dave Curtis, MG Rover designer;

Mike Dale, former BL Leonia vice president;

Brian Darke, MGCC Australia (and Flame 99 owner);

James Daulton, MG RV8 sales and marketing project manager;

George Dowsett, MGB V8 roadster (ADO23/2348) owner;

Mike Dunlop, owner of MGB GT V8 press car;

Ian Elliott, former BL, Austin Rover and Rover Group publicity manager;

Joachim Erkens, Rover Deutschland (MG RV8 homologation) and nowadays Car Service Erkens GmbH;

Nigel Farenden, HM Tooling (RV8 rear lamp tooling);

Nic Fasci, homologation engineer for ZT-V8 and SV;

Brian Field, (late) MGB GT V8 rally participant extraordinaire;

Jason Foord, former Rover Group technician/engineer;

David Franklin, Huntsman Garage, Bristol – creator of the ‘Huntsman MGB V8’;

John & Judy Fry, owners of MGB GT V8 press car tested by Autocar;

Mark Gamble, former British Motor Heritage & Rover Group engineer;

Gérard Germain, engineer at Motolita France who designed the RV8 steering wheel;

Bas Gerrits, MGCC Netherlands – MG V8 owner and enthusiast;

Paul Gill, MGB GT V8 owner and enthusiast;

Simon Goldsworthy, editor MG Enthusiast magazine;

Howard Gosling, former MGCC V8 Register chairman & MGB GT LE V8 owner;

Jonathan Gould, designer involved in several MG V8-related projects;

Malcolm Green, MG historian and author;

Simon Green, founder and owner of ‘Moto-Lita’;

Tony Greenslade, former MG RV8 team member;

Terry Grimes, MGB GT V8 owner and former MG employee;

Ken Hall, ex Pressed Steel Cowley MGB trim line;

Richard Hamblin, former Rover Group design director and RSP director;

Harris Hayes, North American specialist car dealer;

Don Hayter, former MG body draughtsman and latterly MG chief engineer;

Bill Hewitt, Hewitt Motorsports – and creators of the MGB ‘Super B’ of 1989;

Richard Higgins, Rover Group – MG RV8 project engineer and ‘Team Cowley’ member;

Ted Higgins, David Price Racing;

Noel Hodson, formerly of Mallalieu Engineering;

George Hopkins, owner (2012) of the hillclimbing MG RV8;

Gerald Hughes, photographer (Frontline Costello MGB LE50);

Terry Hunt, MG RV8 Cowley project manager;

Steve Illing, owner of the MGB GT V8 that appeared in ST publicity;

Barrie Jackson, former MG engineer;

Neil Jenkins, formerly with Descartes Design and later Krafthaus;

Kevin Jones, former Rover Group publicity manager;

Walter Kallenberg, MGCC Germany;

David Keene, former Rover lighting engineer (RV8);

Martin Kinch, MG RV8 purchasing manager;

Tim King, MG RV8 hillclimb car driver;

Dick Knudson, American MG historian;

Peter Kuruber, owner (as of 2011) of MG RV8 ‘K6 MGR’;

Richard Ladds, MG Owners’ Club;

Cliff Law, first manufacturing manager for the MG RV8;

Roy Lewis, ex Pressed Steel Cowley MGB trim line;

John Lindsay, former Jaguar Rover Australia engineer involved with homologation;

Robert Lindsay, actor and former MG RV8 owner (and also his PA, Anna de-Pol);

Brian Luti, MG V8 specialist (ZT & SV);

Rod Lyne, (late) former MG engineer;

David MacDougall, former Rover Group engineer;

Robert MacGillivray, owner of the 1973 show car;

Harris Mann, now an independent designer – worked for BLMC, MG Rover and others;

Andrew Marsh, Maidstone Sports Cars – builders of MG GTRV8;

Alan Matthews, former MG Rover test engineer;

Scott Miller, US-based MG RV8 enthusiast;

Mark Mitchell, Unicla International Ltd (MG RV8 air-conditioning units);

Terry Mitchell, (late) former MG chief chassis engineer;

Ian Moreton, MG SV project manager;

Kevin Morley, former Rover Group marketing director;

Harry Morten, former owner of a Lenham MGB GT V8 convertible (Damask ‘1186’)

Colin Murrell, MG ZT 260 owner and ‘Two Sixties’ member;

Wayne Nation, former Rover and MG Rover Group chassis development engineer;

Ron Neal, US owner of ex-Rousch assessment MG SV;

Peter Neal, former MG electrical engineer;

Bob Neville, former MG apprentice and V8 racer;

Brian Newcombe, MG RV8 project manager on interior trim;

John Newey, lucky owner of an RV8, SV-R and a ZT-400;

Mike O’Hara, former RSP commercial manager;

Peter O’Hare, owner of RV8 chassis number ‘900000’;

Jim O’Neill, former chief body engineer at MG;

Adrian Oates, MG SV Club;

Rob Oldaker, former MG Rover Group;

Andrew Peck, ‘Joint Engineering Team Manager’ on the MG RV8;

Dave Peers, former Rover chassis engineer and RV8 hillclimb car developer;

David Phillips, former KONI shock absorber engineer involved with MG RV8;

Guy Pigounakis, Rover Group MG general manager during the life of the RV8;

David Price, David Price Racing;

Terry Price, former MG RV8 project manager;

Rod Ramsay, Rover Group and later MG Rover Group sales and marketing director;

Stuart Ratcliff, RV8 Cars Australia;

Roger Redknap, MG RV8 engineering and early Rover 75 performance work;

Mark Richardson, pre-production MGB GT V8 owner;

Trevor Ripley, owner (2012) of prototype ‘DEV2’ for MG RV8;

Andrew Roberts, motoring author and MG expert;

Graham Robson, motoring author;

Steve Schlemmer, former RSP director;

Roger Sharpe, Rover and later MG Rover test programme manager;

Colin Shea, Japan-based MG RV8 export specialist;

Neil Sims, owner of MG RV8 factory demonstrator;

Andy Smith, former MG Rover Group engineer;

Ken Smith, North American MGB Register;

Victor Smith, MG Car Club V8 Register;

Bob Staniland, former MG engineer;

John Stephenson, former Rover Group engineer, product planner and director and director of RSP;

Nick Stephenson, former MG Rover Group;

Peter Stevens, former MG Rover Group director of design;

Jim Stimson, former MG designer;

Ian Strong, Portland Engineering;

Matt Taylor, Orchard Engineering;

John Thornley OBE (the late), former MG Car Company managing director and MG Car Club president;

Kim Tonry, American MG enthusiast and writer;

Derek Tribbick, former Pressed Steel body engineer;

Paul Wager, editor, Classic Car Mart;

Bill Wallis (the late), former MG Car Club president;

Jeff Ward, owner of GT V8 and contributor of photos of ST Spoiler;

Martin West, first external MG RV8 customer;

Clive Wheatley, MG V8 specialist;

David White, MG RV8 electrical team, June to December 1992;

George Wilder, MG Car Club – and RV8 enthusiast;

Dave Wilson, ex Morris Bodies, Coventry;

Peter Wilson, owner of the last MGB GT V8;

Steve Wilson, contributor to Classic Car Mart magazine;

David Wood, managing director, Luffield Cars Ltd;

Lawrence Woods, MG Costello website and Costello Mk I owner;

Clive Woolmer, former Rover graduate who worked on the RV8 and who appears in several of the contemporary press photos;

Dickie Wright (the late), former MG engineer;

Gordon Wright, former Leyland Cars engineer involved in testing;

Don Wyatt, RSP designer;

John Yardy, original manufacturer of burr elm veneered RV8 facia and door trims;

John Yea, managing director British Motor Heritage and former RSP;

Lody Yuen, Unicla International Ltd (MG RV8 air-conditioning units).

Jean and Geoff Allen at an MG Car Club event at Beaulieu in the late 1980s. Author

DEDICATION TO GEOFF ALLEN, THE ABINGDON GENTLEMAN

If there is one man who bridged the gap between enthusiast, expert and MG employee, and embraced the whole with patience, friendliness and enthusiasm, it was the quietly spoken, thoughtful and always tactful (if sometimes mischievous) man who started at the Abingdon factory in 1954. After leaving in 1980, he went on to become not only one of the most knowledgeable MG restorers in the business, but a stalwart of the MG Car Club V8 Register. I was privileged to know Geoff (who rebuilt my MGB GT V8), and his lovely wife Jean (who christened my car ‘Orville’) – both of whom always had a warm welcome and friendly word for MG enthusiasts.

Geoff also had the respect of all his former MG factory colleagues, one of whom said simply that he was a ‘lovely gentleman’. It was Geoff who had the foresight to make hand-written copies of the factory records when closure became inevitable; thankfully key records were saved for the Heritage Museum archives – although history has shown that not every set of records of this kind was regarded with the same degree of reverence (for example, the RV8 records were rescued from a skip).

Geoff became the much respected registrar of the V8 Register and shared his knowledge and memories widely – for which I and legions of other fans of the MGB GT V8 owe an enormous debt of thanks. After retirement, Geoff and Jean moved away from Abingdon and enjoyed a happy number of years in Cheshire. Sadly Geoff passed away in 2006 – but he left a bountiful legacy, and for his friends, fond memories.

CHAPTER ONE

ROOTS: THE MGB AND THE ROVER V8

MAGIC IN A NEW SHAPE – THE CREATION OF THE MGB

The genesis of the MGB – the source of the Costello, MGB GT V8 and RV8 derivatives described in later chapters – stems from the remarkable resurgence of MG as a sports-car maker in the period after World War II, when Britain’s export drive led to a major sales drive in North America. The story was not all plain sailing, however: the MGA that came before the MGB had a protracted gestation (which is touched on later, in the story of the MGC), but with the establishment of a dedicated design office at Abingdon and a talented team overseen by managing director John Thornley and chief engineer Syd Enever, thoughts of an eventual successor for the MGA began at the outset. John Thornley explained to the author that after the MGA launch in the summer of 1955, he and Syd Enever turned their attention towards an eventual replacement:

In November 1955 Sydney and I produced a joint paper ‘Suggested Design and Development Programme for Abingdon Products’, in which we argued quite strongly that all future Abingdon cars should have chassis frames. Yet by the middle of the following year, we were scratching out the beginnings of the ‘B’, which gradually became monocoque!

The initial studies included an exercise simply to re-body the MGA, retaining the separate chassis but clothing it in a new style offered by the Italian stylist, Frua – but before long, as Thornley noted, Enever was keenly pursuing the idea of an open-topped monocoque, with the ‘chassis’ effectively integrated into the main bodyshell (the two were distinctly separate structures on the MGA and most other contemporary sports cars). This allowed an almost clean sheet design, although the basic proportions and much of the running gear would remain similar to those of the MGA.

In the course of developing the MGB, Jim O’Neill, Don Hayter and their colleagues moved gradually from the MGA style, through ‘EX214’ (as per this model, now part of the Heritage Collection) towards the familiar broad-grilled MGB appearance. Author

The MGB – source of the Costello, MGB GT V8 and MG RV8 cars which feature throughout the first half of this book – celebrated its Golden Jubilee in 2012. This is an early ‘pull handle’ roadster in Iris Blue, first registered in December 1962. Author

As with most studies initiated at Abingdon, much of the work was fastidiously recorded in MG’s famous ‘EX-Register’, with each new project assigned a sequential code with suffixes to define drawings or prototypes. The first entry of relevance to what would become the MGB was EX205, followed by EX214; of far greater importance would be the Austin Drawing Office code of ADO 23. Syd Enever played a very hands-on role in the design of the new car, ensuring that it would be strongly built and arguably a little heavier than perhaps it needed to be.

The starting point for the style of the new sports car was said to be the EX181 record breaker of 1957, but there were clearly various contemporary influences. Early efforts were styled by MG’s chief body engineer Jim O’Neill, and were refined by body draughtsman Don Hayter, who had joined MG in 1956. The resulting clean, simple, slightly Italianate lines proved to be just right for a new sports car for the 1960s, and the new MGB made its world motor show debut at the Paris Salon in September 1962.

During their consultancy work for BMC, Pininfarina came up with this elegant coupé version of the MGB; the higher windscreen and crease above it are familiar as features that would be seen on the eventual MGB GT style, but otherwise the roof line is quite different. Pininfarina SpA

This photograph, from Pininfarina’s archives, shows the definitive MGB coupé style that the company developed to MG’s brief, and using Jim Stimpson’s model as a starting point. Note how much sharper the lines have become compared with the earlier sketch above. Pininfarina SpA

FASTBACK STYLE – THE GENESIS OF THE MGB GT

When it came to a coupé version of the MGB, MG’s managing director John Thornley was determined to create a smartly styled car in which an owner would be happy to drive to the office, in a conservative contemporary environment where perhaps an open-topped roadster might have seemed too brashly informal.

The coupé version of the MGA had drawn a mixed response; the style of this model was more akin to a roadster with a simple fixed hardtop, and its unkinder critics said it looked like an MGA with a bowler hat – whereas many car makers of the early 1960s were offering rather more sleekly styled coupés. Thornley wanted a slice of those sales, and reminiscing in July 1993, told the author: ‘I saw, in a production car race at Silverstone, three Aston Martin DB2/4s running in line ahead, and I became obsessed that they were of the shape we should pursue.’ But by this time the MGA Coupé was too far down the road towards production.

Pininfarina’s stroke of genius was the creation of a neat opening tailgate for their MG coupé, at a time when the term ‘hatchback’ had yet to be coined. Pininfarina SpA.

Studies for an ‘MG coupé’ under the code EX227 began in 1962, but scrutiny of the EX-Register shows that despite what has been written in the past (and this author is amongst the guilty!) this project had no real relationship to the MGB. Eventually it was obvious that the only realistic prospect for the foreseeable future was to add an unstressed roof to the strongly engineered MGB monocoque, and to accept the fact that the end result would be heavier than ideal.

Initial efforts to create a coupé version of the MGB harked back to design models created under the direction of chief body engineer Jim O’Neill during the evolution of the MGB itself, but in constraining themselves to retaining the low windscreen height of the MGB roadster (determined in part through competition regulations, to allow entries in international sports-car race events), the design team at Abingdon found it difficult to create a satisfactory result. In the end, by abandoning the roadster screen shape and size, and specifying a taller windscreen, the result was much more elegant.

Contrary to what has often been suggested, the inspiration for this actually came from Abingdon rather than Pininfarina (see section below), although the expertise of the Italian styling maestros undoubtedly ensured that a much sharper style evolved, which cleverly married the rounded shape of the MGB monocoque with a crisply edged roof shape: Sergio Pininfarina told the author that this was, in his view, ‘…one of the best designs that came out of Pininfarina for BMC.’

The process was not a straightforward one, however, as a surviving photo of Pininfarina’s first attempt at an MGB coupé shows: the taller windscreen is certainly there, as is a subtle crease above it, but the roof shows a more softly curved profile with slim rear pillars that are unlike the final more angular design.

Abingdon and the MGB GT

Although the conventional view of the genesis of the MGB GT is that it was all the work of the Italian Pininfarina design house, there was no reference to their role at the launch of the car, and beyond the comments from Sergio Pininfarina to the author, the company has always fought shy of overtly celebrating the pretty coupé as being one of its masterpieces. The underlying reason for this may be that while Pininfarina undoubtedly waved a magic wand over the design and ensured it became a classic, in this case their role was more body contractor and design refiner rather than full-blown concept artiste.

One of the people who set the tone for the shape of the MGB GT was in fact Jim Stimson, a body engineer who, prior to his time at MG, had been part of the original Morris Minor team, and who told the author that he recalled drawing the general arrangement for the MG TC Midget. After twenty years at Cowley, Stimson had joined the Abingdon team along with Mike Holliday and Pat Rees in 1962, and one of his frequent jobs was to provide a ‘scribbling pad’ for the fertile mind of Syd Enever.

I did the concept for the MGB GT for the plant director, John Thornley – it was his idea. We had a little office of our own, not part of the production drawing office. Syd wanted a fastback – John Thornley had seen that kind of shape on some Aston Martins. Thornley was quite specific that he wanted a higher windscreen line; this wasn’t Farina’s idea – it was Thornley’s!

Peter Neal recalls that Stimson, Holliday and Rees, who had come together from one of the design ‘cells’ at Cowley, were based in a portioned room in MG’s boiler house:

The need for Syd to find them some project work coincided with Jim O’Neill being snowed under with various production work on the MGB, MGC, Sprite and Midget, the big Healey, ADO 34 and so on, with which his team – by now Denis Williams, Don Hayter, Don Butler, Des Jones and myself – were fully occupied. Syd was indeed under pressure from John Thornley to get the coupé version of the MGB under way, and I believe that Syd suggested to Jim O’Neill that he should use Jim Stimson for this task.

Stimson himself appreciates that he was part of a team, but wants to ensure that more credit is given to Abingdon than has often been the case:

When I see in books that Farina did this I am very annoyed. I laid out the whole part of the body above the roadster base, full size on a drawing that was about eighteen feet long by five high; it was all worked out with contours and so on – and all at the request of John Thornley and Syd Enever. Syd had to get permission from Longbridge in those days, to get it into production.

The men from MG knew they needed to have a convincing case in order to persuade the BMC top people of the merits of their proposal:

The management couldn’t really read or interpret drawings, so having laid out the plans full size we laid out a quarter-scale version. We took a red model of the MGB roadster and the plans to Bodies Branch in Coventry, and they converted the model to represent the GT.

Syd then took this model to the management at Longbridge, and they said in effect ‘Don’t play around with this; get Farina to do it!’ Syd came back to Abingdon and he was clearly very upset at the way they had treated him; but he told me to roll up my drawings and to send them off to Farina along with an open car, which we did – and so the Italians built the steel prototype.

In fact the shape of the Farina car is almost the same as my proposal, but what Farina did was to introduce the sharp feature line just above the windscreen – I’d just made it roll smoothly over, and I must admit that this change by Farina improved the style immeasurably.

Stimson concedes that he was not responsible for any of the other detailing – including the clever opening tailgate – just the exterior skin lines. The lifting rear door – creating in effect one of the first sports hatchbacks – was very much to the credit of Pininfarina.

The problem for historians is that John Thornley in his own public pronouncements tended to credit Pininfarina for the whole thing – although this could be part politics and part fading memory (in one letter to the author, Thornley refers to the design being by Frua – but this was long after the event, and he could well have been confusing the MGB GT with an earlier MGA restyle project). There was certainly some intrigue surrounding the fate of the Pininfarina-built prototype, which Roy Brocklehurst insisted was destroyed to avoid payment of import duties – and yet the car survives in private hands, having at one stage been owned by the wife of a Nuffield exports director.

Jim Stimson worked on many more projects – for example his signature can be seen on MG’s own drawings of the later Pininfarina EX234 project, and he was responsible for the design of the aerodynamic nose cone on the Le Mans MGB and for work on some of Syd Enever’s more fanciful projects, such as a new generation of MG record breakers.

Of course Pininfarina, like many great independent design houses, was not averse to cross-pollinating between projects and clients, and for the definitive MGB GT style, their designers undoubtedly referred back to a recent project they had overseen which had had great publicity in Europe: this story is told in the side panel.

THE SUCCESS OF THE MGB COUPÉ PROTOTYPE

Upon arrival, the Pininfarina-built MGB coupé prototype (the ‘GT’ name came later) proved to be a sensational success both at Longbridge and at Abingdon; at the time, XC512/ADO30 was still a gleam in BMC chairman Sir George Harriman’s eye, and the potential for some family resemblance to his pet project for a ‘super sports car’ to challenge Jaguar’s E-Type would surely not have been lost on him. Peter Neal says that with all the debate about the height of the windscreen referred to earlier, ‘people rather overlook Pininfarina’s masterstroke, the tailgate. I don’t think that anyone at BMC had ever thought of doing this on a sports car. In my view it transformed the MGB, giving it loads more boot space and making it a far more practical car.’

The decision to add the coupé to the MGB model range was swiftly taken, and the engineering work was overseen by Abingdon and Pressed Steel, with Derek Tribbick of the latter’s Swindon plant taking on responsibility for the new panels and panel changes. Peter Neal recalls being told at the time that when the prototype arrived back in the UK, Sir George Harriman instructed that the car should be ‘sent straight to Pressed Steel to be engineered with no design changes.’

In fact some of the Italian coachbuilder’s special flourishes – such as the frameless rear quarter lights (windows), ribbed flooring in the luggage compartment and other fancy trim details, were dropped, but in essence the production MGB GT (MGB/GT for North America – an idea of BMC USA sales and marketing man Bob Burden) very closely resembled the Pininfarina-built prototype – a credit to all those who had a hand in its creation.

Thornley and Enever were highly delighted, and although sales in the United States – from the spring of 1966 – were initially slow (and would never match those of the open roadster), the GT usefully extended the reach of the MG sports car range, the tiny ‘plus two’ seating below the sloping roof offering some respite for the sports car owner who had started a family, and thereby helping to keep his or her custom in the BMC group.

PININFARINA AND THE BMC SPORTS CAR FAMILY

Very often the best designs do not magically appear: they evolve or are influenced by an earlier creation. The classic combination of curves and the sharply creased roof of the MGB GT is a perfect example of this. In 1961, a design competition was staged by Année Automobile (Automobile Year) with a prestigious 10,000 Swiss franc prize – but in addition, the winning design would be translated by Pininfarina into a full-size working prototype.

Three students at the Hochschule für Gestaltung design school in Ulm, in the south of what was then Western Germany – namely Michael Conrad, Henner Werner and Pio Manzoni (nicknamed Manzù after his famous sculptor father) – collaborated and created what proved to be the winning design, an elegant coupé. This was duly constructed by the Italian coachbuilder on the basis of an Austin-Healey 3000 chassis.

The competition winners were fêted at the March 1962 Geneva Salon, and Pininfarina began work that spring, with the end result – bearing a cheeky ‘Firrere’ badge on the nose – appearing at the Earls Court Motor Show (17 to 27 October) across the hall from the MGB, also making its British motor show debut – followed by appearances at the October–November 1962 Turin and March 1963 Geneva motor shows.

The Pininfarina Healey clearly caught the interest of the mandarins of the British Motor Corporation, who adopted the design as the basis of a proposed luxury sports car to sit in the BMC range above the Big Healey; it was codenamed XC512/ ADO30. The story of that ultimately abortive project need not concern us further here, but of greater relevance was the clever way the design had married together a curvaceous sporting lower body with a crisply profiled roof, allowing a remarkably generous and airy cabin space.

It can hardly be a coincidence that whilst the XC512 project eventually faltered, key aspects of the 1965 MGB GT coupé – with the neatly tailored roof creases courtesy of Pininfarina – bore some resemblance to the shape created by the students from Ulm – one of whom (Manzù) would go on to lead the design of the Fiat 127, although he sadly never lived to see that seminal Italian car in production.

The Pininfarina Austin-Healey 3000 design study, photographed in Turin in 1962. Note the distinctive marriage of a sleek curvaceous lower body shape with a neat, airy but angular roof structure – a theme later reflected in the production MGB GT. Pininfarina SpA

The MGC was available in both open and GT coupé versions; launched at the same 1967 Earls Court Motor Show as the Rover 3.5-Litre, the model was discontinued less than two years later, in July 1969. Just 9,002 MGCs were sold, which is more than the later MGB GT V8 could muster – but on the other hand the MGC was sold internationally in both GT and Roadster forms, including in North America. Author

MORE POWER – THE MGC AND AUSTIN-HEALEY 3000 MK IV

Throughout much of its production life and for some time beyond, the MGC was like the current advertisements for Marmite: you either loved it or hated it. On the plus side it had a refined, silky smooth seven-bearing straight six that gave it a fairly leisurely but reasonably powerful performance; on the down side, its close resemblance to the nimbler MGB, its sparse trimmings, and above all its very heavy cast-iron engine provided much ammunition for its detractors. The fact that the MGC was launched around the time that the press were turning against BMC, and were increasingly critical of the works of the entire company, only added fuel to the fire.

The roots of the MGC, however, go back at least as far as those of the MGB, but at the outset the two projects had different briefs. In 1957, MG at Abingdon was given responsibility for the production of all BMC’s sports car ranges, and that brought Austin-Healey and MG under the same roof for the first time. The original Austin-Healey, the ‘Hundred’ of 1953, had been conceived by Donald Healey with the support of BMC chairman Sir Leonard Lord (later Lord Lambury), who had no problem with the idea of creating an Austin-based sports car to rival the MG from the old Nuffield family. At the same time, Lord had refused to sanction MG’s proposal for a new sports car, although this would eventually come back for a more successful second round to become the basis of the MGA.

Sports car sibling rivalries within BMC were therefore well established in the early 1950s, although the crucial relationships between Syd Enever and Geoff Healey were always more than cordial. Even so, it was clear that Thornley and Enever preferred to be masters of their own destiny, so when the Austin-Healey 100/6 came to Abingdon, they began to plot its eventual replacement.

Under project code EX210, which was envisaged originally as a joint MG Six/Austin-Healey 100/6 sports car, the concept was to utilize the 2.6-litre C-Series engine which had been introduced to the Austin Healey just a few years earlier. It did not take long, however, for realism to bite, and so the concept of a new 6-cylinder MG moved closer to the project to replace the MGA; this was a clever move on Thornley’s part as it would clearly lock the Healeys even more closely in to what MG wanted. With overall responsibility for the Austin-Healey, Thornley explained to the author that ‘the immediate effect of this was that the future MGB became not only the basic successor to the MGA but to the Healey 3000 as well.’

By this stage – 1960 – BMC was planning a new family of V-form engines to replace the in-line B and C Series units, and although quite a lot of work was done on the V4, relatively little progress was made on the larger V6 beyond some packaging work; the Abingdon design team looked at packaging the V6 in November 1960, in what was already becoming the ‘MGB’, but no engine materialized for them to look at. The in-line six was therefore likely to be around for some time to come. As Thornley said:

It is this dual requirement which accounted for the large gap between the back of the radiator and the front of the engine in the early MGB. It also means that the car is some six inches longer than it might otherwise have been, a contribution to the impeccable handling of the B.

On the other hand, the V4 unit was developed as far as running engines, and at least one arrived at Abingdon, where it was tried in an MGA. Largely as a consequence of this, the engine bay of the MGB was not only designed to accommodate a straight six, but was also laid out to allow the fitment of the wider V4 – a decision that, as we shall see in later chapters, would prove beneficial much later when other engines were being looked at.

The detailed story of the MGC deserves more space than is warranted here, but it is sufficient to say that the Healey family fell out of love with it, and the projected Austin Healey 3000 Mk IV variant was dropped at quite a late stage, after work had begun on sales and servicing literature. The MGC was a classic missed opportunity, hamstrung not by the people at Abingdon but by a combination of BMC budget constraints and Longbridge management intransigence, to which must be added the poor reception given to the car on its launch.

The engine – a redesign of the C Series – was endemic of the whole project; its weight, bulk and disappointingly unexciting design were all interlinked with BMC’s obsession with creating a bulky flagship to replace their ageing Austin Westminster, Wolseley 6/110 and Vanden-Plas Princess 4-litre R.

The sheer size of the engine necessitated a complete redesign of the front suspension (and much of the surrounding inner structure) of the MGB, bulkhead constraints to allow for the fitment of a Borg Warner BW35 gearbox, and the need to move the radiator forward conspired to create a car with significantly different traits to the MGB from which it was clearly derived, and the bonnet bulges – nowadays celebrated as distinctive hallmarks of the MGC – were seen by many at the time as ugly features that spoilt the handsome lines of the basic car.

It is no coincidence that the creators of subsequent MGB variants – the later series of Costello models and the MGB GT V8, covered in later chapters – would look at ways of avoiding the use of a bonnet bulge.

The MGC was launched in September 1967 and remained in production for just two years, becoming an early casualty of the British Leyland merger of the spring of 1968; arguably it came good later in its life, spawned one of the most exciting post-war MG Sebring race cars, and would go on to be revered in old age. Some development work was even done to add fuel injection to the engine, but there is little doubt that the MGC provided ammunition for MG’s opponents within the newly merged British Leyland (with Triumph in the same family), and could have put paid to the prospects of a further big-engined MG. Thankfully, however, this would not prove to be the case.

Dave Cleverley of the Pressed Steel design team was involved in this exercise to facelift the MGB range; like the Austin Maxi four-door saloon behind it, this project never proceeded.

THE DAIMLER V8-ENGINED MGB

As explained in the main text, the Abingdon engineers did look at the possibility of fitting one of the Edward Turner designed Daimler V8s into the MGB, but they found that the exercise was a dead end and so did no further work beyond chopping about a roadster body. However, this did not prevent Raymond Smith, an engineer who worked for the famous Ricardo engineering concern in Shoreham, from trying his hand at building his own MGB Daimler V8, using a 1964 MGB roadster and a 2.5-litre Daimler engine as his starting point.

He dubbed the car the ‘Le Mans 51A’, for reasons that are lost in history, and at some point in its life it acquired some paperwork which seemed to imply that the project had been done with the full co-operation of the designers at Abingdon. Several times the story has bubbled up in magazines and even books with the suggestion that this car is a ‘missing link’ built as some kind of three-way tryst between Daimler, MG and Ricardo in the mid-1960s. The author undertook some thorough research on this car in the early 1990s and contacted Ricardo and a number of former MG luminaries such as Terry Mitchell and John Thornley among others.

The truth seems to be a little different from the legend; if MG knew about the project (and I have found no one who remembers it), and if it had dated from the period implied in the curious paperwork (undated), then surely they might have tacitly encouraged the exercise (after all, they were hardly above ‘skunk works’ projects themselves!). However, a former colleague of Raymond Smith confirmed to me in a letter of June 1993 that: ‘Ricardo was not involved. Many of the present staff were on site when Mr Smith decided to fit the Daimler engine in his MGB. This was a private project in his own time and at his own expense, using the company facilities.’

It transpired that all this work (which involved turbo-charging, according to the paperwork) occurred in the 1970s, by which time the Rover V8 was surely a more viable proposition. The colleague from Ricardo could be quite certain of the timing as he and Mr Smith had joined the company at around the same time.

The car fell into some disrepair in the 1980s, when it was owned by father and son Ernest and Jeremy Leyland, who then sold it to Colin Groves who restored it before selling it in the middle of the following decade, and it ended up in Switzerland. The lack of any definitive proof of a ‘factory’ provenance does not take away from the fact that the ‘Le Mans 51A’ MGB Daimler V8 is quite an interesting exercise, which if nothing else is visible proof that the engine was never going to be an easy fit!

One of the ideas mooted at MG following the merger of BMC and Jaguar – the latter bringing with it the Daimler marque and engine range – was to use the Daimler V8 (in either 2.5- or 4.5-litre form) in the MGB. MG’s own studies soon showed the impracticalities of the concept, but as an entirely separate exercise, this Tartan Red 1964 MGB (‘GHN 3-28395’) was converted as a private exercise by a Ricardo Engineering employee. The car was restored in the 1990s and the clearance problems posed by the engine can be clearly seen!

MERGER MANIA: BMC, JAGUAR, PRESSED STEEL AND LEYLAND

The backdrop to the creation of the MGC was an atmosphere of consolidation in the car industry – with much of the focus on the relative status of the BMC leviathan (headed by Sir George Harriman, heir to Sir Leonard Lord), and the much smaller but arguably more progressive and businesslike Leyland Motor Corporation (overseen by industry dynamo and sales supremo Donald Stokes). From the early part of the 1960s, the various key players in the British car industry began to circulate round the dance floor, new partners linking up in a way that was part industrial strategy and part political expediency.

The first big move came in 1965, when BMC merged with Pressed Steel, at that stage Britain’s biggest supplier of steel car bodies to the various makers still in business; this merger sent panic through those parts of the industry still outside the BMC sphere of influence, and undoubtedly helped nudge Jaguar towards a relationship with BMC, and Rover to one with Leyland.

The joining together of BMC with Jaguar was a marriage of convenience, the result being an umbrella body known as ‘British Motor Holdings’, under which Jaguar chairman Sir William Lyons could retain control of his fiefdom. But it was a fudge, and made little practical difference to the underlying problems that BMC was facing. However, when BMC joined up with Jaguar in 1966, the powertrain opportunities increased; Jaguar brought with it Coventry Climax and Daimler, both of whom had V8 engines in their armoury.

The Abingdon engineers looked at the 4.5-litre Daimler Majestic Major engine, but found that it could not be made to fit without drastic surgery to the engine bay. MG engineer Rod Lyne remembered taking a blue MGB roadster bodyshell for some rudimentary research: ‘We put it on the table and sliced it in half lengthways, and moved the two bits apart; we found that the exhaust manifolds came out where the chassis members sat, and so we ended up moving the body halves six inches apart.’ It was obvious that this would not be a practical option, ‘so we cut the halves in half again the other way, and put the four resulting pieces in a skip’.

Coventry Climax offered the prospect of something more exotic in the form of their own sporting V8, available as 1.8 and 2.5-litre units. Don Hayter went with Syd Enever to see the Healeys at their premises in Warwick; here they looked at an MGB GT into which the Healeys had shoehorned a 1.8-litre unit, with a veritable medusa of exhaust manifolding to clear those same chassis members that had challenged Rod Lyne with the Daimler unit.

In addition, records associated with the original MGC roadster prototype (chassis number GCN1-100, registration number FRX 692C, and owned in 2012 by Tim Hodgkinson) show that no fewer than fourteen different engine, transmission and axle combinations were tried in this particular car at one stage or another, and one of these involved a Coventry Climax V8 unit. In the event, this engine was probably too exotic and limited in volume terms for a production MG, but the narrowness of the lower part of the MGB engine bay would also be an issue that would come back to haunt the engineers a few years later.

The government of the time – under Labour’s progressive, modernizing and interventionist lead of Harold Wilson and Tony Benn – wanted more consolidation in the British car industry, and they brokered a merger between ‘BMH’ and Leyland, the outcome of which was the formation of the British Leyland Motor Corporation, announced to the world in January 1968 and consummated that spring. Suddenly, in terms of the car marques alone, Austin, Austin-Healey, Morris, MG, Riley, Wolseley, Vanden Plas, Jaguar and Daimler were now all in the same basket as Rover, Alvis and Triumph. It wasn’t the happiest of marriages from the outset, but the political manoeuvrings and the commercial travails of BMC rather forced the issue.

The fears and uncertainties of all those constituent members of the two former rival organizations were balanced by the opportunities that the merger appeared to offer – not least fresh ideas and investment. At first the affairs of MG and Triumph seemed set to follow blissfully separate trajectories, but the rationalization of sports cars was an obvious project to act as a test case, and a catalyst for further consolidation of the whole business.

In 1969, British Leyland Motor Corporation’s Austin-Morris division formed a ‘Product Policy Group’ (PPG), a committee set under the chairmanship of George Turnbull and which met monthly from 1969 to 1974 (in 1974 and the early part of 1975 it was chaired by Keith Hopkins, who took Turnbull’s place when the latter resigned in September 1973 and went to Hyundai). I am indebted to Graham Robson who has managed to acquire a set of all the minutes.

One of the first things the new PPG looked at was the vexed sports car question, and an early casualty was the big MG; in a meeting in May 1969, the PPG noted that it had been decided that ‘the MGC will be phased out this year… Product Planning proposed to take a completely new look at the sports car market… this would be an ideal programme to start corporate planning with Triumph and Rover.’

In July, the MGC duly reached the end of the road, and with Jaguar seen as the logical parent for any large sports cars, the PPG focused its attention on smaller models; consequently the future of the concept of a big-engined MG seemed uncertain. But as we shall see in the next chapter, the impetus to turn this round came from an unexpected quarter.

EIGHT CYLINDERS IN PLACE OF SIX: THE ROVER V8 STORY

The story of how the Rover V8 engine began its association with MG belongs properly in the chapters which follow, but just as we have explored how the MGB and MGC came to be, it is fitting that we consider the parallel evolution of the alloy V8 engine that made such a difference to the MG family. The origins of the Rover unit lie with General Motors, but it was fate that led the small independent British car maker eventually to buy the rights to one of America’s most interesting engines from the world’s biggest car maker.

In the spring of 1964, the President of Rover’s North American operation, J. Bruce McWilliams, discussed with William Martin-Hurst, the British managing director, the need for a new engine for the Rover car range. The Rover 2000 had been successfully launched the previous year, but the larger Rover saloons still relied on an ageing and heavy 3-litre straight six. Rover had dallied with gas turbine engines for a number of years, but this had proved to be a dead end for passenger cars, and so the need for a new, more conventional power unit was becoming desperate.

McWilliams suggested buying in a suitable small American V8 engine, which would have saved costs and at a stroke would have reduced service problems in the US market. William Martin-Hurst was receptive to this idea, and so when he visited the United States to discuss the possibility of selling Rover engines to Mercury Marine, he was already on the lookout for a V8 unit to fulfil Rover’s future passenger car requirements. The role that McWilliams took in this process has often been omitted from Rover history, and the author is grateful to McWilliams for putting the record straight.

In Mercury Marine’s experimental workshop was an example of the Buick alloy engine, and checking its size Martin-Hurst found that it would easily have fitted in the existing engine bay of the Rover P6 – yet it had a capacity of over 3.5 litres. Once he learnt that General Motors were abandoning the engine, Martin-Hurst contacted Ed Rollert, Buick’s general manager, to discuss the possibility of obtaining a licence to build the engine in Britain. Initially the GM management were sceptical about the seriousness of the Rover enquiry, but eventually they were convinced, and a deal was done.

Two key people involved in the Rover V8 project were Bruce McWilliams (left) and William Martin-Hurst (right), pictured here in 1964 in a photo by their colleague John Dugdale. John Dugdale

The Rover 3.5-litre Saloon and Coupé were in effect updated versions of their Rover 3-Litre equivalents but fitted with the ‘new’ (ex-Buick) alloy V8 engine. Rover

GM had already taken the engine out of production (although they continued later with a cast-iron V6, which owed much to the alloy V8), and the high volume production techniques they had used were inappropriate for Rover, but the deal included access to all the engineering design drawings, service records and so forth. One disadvantage was the fact that the final production versions of the Buick engine differed from the original design drawings, many minor but significant alterations having taken place in production, and so Rover were extremely fortunate to be able to acquire the help of Buick’s chief engine designer Joe Turlay (many books record his name wrongly as ‘Turley’) – affectionately nicknamed ‘Aluminum Joe’ by Rover staff – who was on the point of retiring.

The ‘Roverization’ of the engine involved a number of significant alterations, although the basic 215cu in capacity remained unchanged. Rover had no experience with, or need for GM-style high-volume engine die-casting facilities, and so the blocks and heads were revised to allow them to be conventionally gravity die-cast by ‘Birmingham Aluminium’ at Smethwick.

Other changes included the improvement of the engine’s revving capabilities, for despite the strong five-bearing crankshaft and the excellent breathing possibilities inherent in the layout, Rover discovered that there were unacceptable stresses induced in the pistons and valve gear at engine speeds above 4,800rpm. The American Rochester carburettor set-up was also ditched in favour of the more familiar twin semi-downdraught SUs, the now familiar ‘pent-roof’ set-up being designed specially by Rover engineer David Wall.

Wall told the author that the Rochester carburettors were abandoned for two reasons: first, they were virtually obsolete; and second, they were unsuitable for European use, often cutting out on heavy cornering. In order to adapt the engine for UK manufacture, Rover also changed the rocker covers from pressed steel to die-cast aluminium, fitted a Lucas distributor and alternator, and of course bespoke exhaust manifolding.

The original Rover V8 engines developed some 150bhp gross at 4,400rpm, but by the middle of 1967, with the combination of twin carburettors and a lower compression ratio, this had risen to 160bhp gross. By the time the engine appeared in the P6B Rover 3500 in 1968, the engine power was up to 164bhp gross at 5,250rpm, with outstanding reliability and a very long life (as a side issue, according to David Wall, the SD1 engine of 1976 would originally have peaked at 6,250rpm, but because of the oil crisis and a number of other reasons, the engine that eventually emerged peaked at 5,500rpm).

In the process of refining the Buick design, new pistons and different materials for the valve train as well as for the bearing inserts and the crankshaft were adopted, the result being a significantly improved engine far better suited to European driving practices. David Wall is keen to emphasize that although Rover did ‘refine’ the engine in the terms of reliability, the Americans retained the edge when it came to installation refinement; he recalls Joe Turlay saying to him ‘If you can see it, hear it, smell it or feel it, then boy you’ve failed!’ Wall subscribes to the maxim that a pound of felt is worth a ton of theory.

The Rover V8 made its debut in the P5 saloon (which was rechristened the P5B in recognition of the Buick origins of the engine) at the October 1967 Motor Show, replacing the old 3-litre straight six and catapulting the staid but elegant big Rover saloon into an all-new performance sector. At the very same show, MG exhibited their new 3-litre straight six-engined MGC sports car…

THE ‘ALUMINUM FIREBALL V8’ FROM GENERAL MOTORS

The 1950s were boom years in the United States, yet the need for European nations to earn dollars to help rebuild their war-shattered economies meant that an increasing number of British and Continental cars found their way across the Atlantic. Volkswagen in particular began to make serious inroads into the car market, largely generating a demand for a newer, lighter car and opening up a new market sector.

American car manufacturers were not oblivious to the potential of this growing sector, and so towards the end of the decade, the ‘Big Three’ – General Motors, Chrysler and Ford – began to develop lighter and more efficient vehicles at the bottom ends of their ranges. Meanwhile General Motors had been experimenting for some time with aluminium as the basis for engine blocks, prototype units appearing in the GM ‘Motorama’ show cars, and so it was natural that the Buick Division of General Motors should pursue the design of a production engine using aluminium alloy for its major components.

The Buick engine which emerged in 1961, followed a year later by a basically similar but partially non-interchangeable Oldsmobile version (the latter had different cylinder heads and fixings), had a capacity of 215cu in (3,531cc) and was largely die-cast, a necessity of the high volumes anticipated by GM and one of the features which distinguishes the Buick engine from its Rover offspring.

In fact three divisions shared the basic engine – Buick, Oldsmobile and Pontiac (the latter sharing the Buick version) – and the engines are often known colloquially as the ‘BOP’ engines as a consequence. To solve the problem of wear in the cylinders, it was decided that the most economical approach would be to use integrally cast iron liners, and the aluminium alloy cylinder heads had separate valve seats, a feature which has persisted to this day and the hardness of which is one of the reasons why the V8 engine has proved suitable for unleaded petrol.