How To Spot: An Original MG A...BONUS, IT'S A "DELUXE"!

hello I'm Andrew Marston and welcome to lb I limited's Philadelphia's showroom this is a 1962 mga 1600 mark - Deluxe we'll get into this in about a second but first I want to go over something a little bit bigger picture as a classic car enthusiast and someone in the profession I'm often asked the question what's your favorite car and I don't know that that's something I can really truly answer I'll probably never get to drive every single one of them and really over the years like I came to this conclusion that well maybe it has more to do with condition so for me I don't necessarily have a favorite car so much as I have a favorite condition which opens the doors up to a wide variety of favorites things with original paint original interior matching numbers and all the little elements that exude preservation in every possible way or that they're as close as they can be to the day that they were built that's the car for me that's what I find most interesting I could easily pick out a McLaren f1 or a phony balagia body delahaye but I think that'd be too easy why not take something that is really a statistical anomaly and what it is an mga for instance and take a closer look at it if it's totally original how many do they make and how many really survived in almost as new condition not many which brings us to our subject car this 1962 mga 1600 mark 2 deluxe was unofficially produced for a buy mga as a deluxe deluxe is a term that you'll often see in quotes in auction catalogues or online for sale in in some capacity because the deluxe model was something that was pumped up by mg dealers at the time due to a set of options so it's no one particular package but if you picked certain competition elements to add to your car they would then be considered a deluxe so that's sort of the broad category so what we have here is a two-part equation that we're going to go over the first is that of the car the mark 2 deluxe which we'll go over in detail what makes it different from say a normal mg the second part we're going to go over is condition which generally is very universal but on this particular car we can point out specific things that are most relevant to an mga so before we do that though I'd like to preface this entire dialogue by stating that I might miss some things there might be some things that you know that you think that users might enjoy hearing about and if that is the case feel free to comment below and keep the discussion going you know every day is a learning experience in this industry and I'm always happy to learn something and teach something when I can that said you're probably looking at this car and you're thinking looks like an mga mark to the recessed grille up front which is sort of ubiquitous on these the leather covered - as well as the horizontal tail lights three big elements that instantly say I'm a mark - but as you get a little closer you notice things like the Dunlop solid wheels and you start to ask yourself well it's not a twin-cam but what it is is a very special mark - with competition upgrades from the factory internally at mg these were known as client competition cars and that is because they offered an array of competition accessories from the twin cam that were then applied to these by order only with approximately 290 of these examples produced they're rarer than a twin cam but they're not often seen they were very popular amongst SCCA racers of the period and as such many became wrecked or neglected or just an old sports car left to be or left to rot or whatever and as a result not too many exist especially not in this condition the Dunlop disc wheels which are more commonly seen on the twin cam we're actually a part of a package that you could work competition suspension which came with obviously the suspension as a name suggests but you've got these wheels and the disc brakes found on the twin cam all the way around and mark 2 is actually utilized a twin cam chassis as a part of that configuration so the underpinnings of this car are indeed as well engineered as they could have been for the time for a road car and a track car four-wheel disc brakes competition suspension solid wheels you're getting all these elements on an otherwise normal yay but from the best-of-the-best deluxe which will often see in quotes is because it was never an official moniker that mg applied to these cars rather it was the way that the selling dealer was able to market these cars so every Deluxe is not created equal essentially you could have the seats and the wheel suspension and brakes but maybe you didn't have the transmission or maybe you didn't have the steering rack so there's actually a variety of combinations that you could or couldn't have the only other obvious component is the steering wheel which is a factory works steering wheel that you might see on things like a Sebring or Lamar race car of the period it's actually quite rare and that is an original so in summation essentially what we have here is a twin cam without a twin cam we've got solid Dunlop disc wheels four-wheel disc brakes twin cam competition suspension all the way around a close ratio gearbox quicker twin cam steering and a very very special competition steering wheel now let's transition into the originality of this car and what makes this whole thing cohesively original and the various elements that make that up since we're here and we have to take it off anyway let's start with the top you'll notice that the fit and finish throughout is tight and nearly perfect everywhere something that I don't think you'd want to pay for to duplicate in a restoration of an mga we know it's original because it has a certain amount of age to it it's the correct gray vinyl and canvas that is supposed to be and little things the way that this 90 degree angle is cut out to fit the top of the door I mean it fits like a glove it's just absolutely incredible much like that of the Jaguar e-type we reviewed on the rear window is also some lettering that describes - how to care for and clean the top overall it's one of those things you have to see in person you also have to look at a lot of other MGAs for this to stand out and have you go wow that's absolutely perfect and original it just becomes obvious when you've seen so many of them so really neat thing and maybe the second or third time I've ever seen it so let's take it off to get to the interior now that the top is off and we can see the car in its true form we can finally take a look at all the little things that make a good car a great car there's a lot to cover everything from little rubber pieces to the big picture paint panel fitment the interior of the engine bay but let's start first with the pane so all these cars when new are finished and nitrocellulose lacquer that's what a lot of car manufacturers at the time used and you rarely see a car today that still has it and if you do see it it's cracked it's cracked in many different places either the whole thing or in areas the problem is is that lacquer paint was very temperature sensitive so the rise and fall in temperature would cause the expanding and contracting of the paint and their over time caused the cracking now in this car obviously it looks really good it almost looks restored so if we take a real close look however and you look down almost in this little Valley here where the fender meets the shroud and the cowl you can see there's just the most minut cracking right along that fender well ting along this great piece here and again on the cow in certain spots it's very faint fortunately the black paint actually hides that lacquer cracking really well so you really don't see it as much unless you're looking in the right light another thing that you really want to look for on any original car believe it or not is flaws flaws are really important because what's under the paint can make a big difference between determining if a car is real and original or restore on English cars of this period it was very common for them to use a red oxide primer to cover the entire car before it was painted in color the red oxide primer would be used absolutely everywhere so remember that as we're going through this car look for it you're gonna see it time and time again under panels and crevices under the dash we'll show it to you in detail but keep an eye out for it now on this car and when you're looking at other cars the very first place that you can see it is right here it's the most obvious spot your eye goes right to it because there used to be some sort of maybe mirror or something right here in this Jam and where the paint is missing if you look closely there's red oxide primer black paint red oxide primer metal that's what you want to see so flaws are sort of a telltale sign if a car is real or not so we always look for them and we value them as such in keeping with the theme of flaws which are actually sort of this insight to how a car can be genuine and real let's take a look at some rubber items and some other features on the front end of the car so you'll notice here that this bumper over Eiger has a trim piece and this trim piece is perfectly contoured to the shape of the bumper but if you touch it and try to dig your fingernail into it rock hard and it's rock hard because it's been there since in 1962 and when rubber ages it hardens so the fact that this car has quite a bit of rubber on it that's actually hard and not supple it's kind of what you want to see yes it's not suppl it should be replaced but it's an original car so we're not going to there's some light scratching and pitting in the chrome but it's original there's a few chips and the paint all over the nose they're small but they're there I mean drive a car 16,000 miles you get a few chips other things to point out that are really great marchell headlamps you never see these on M G's Ferraris Maseratis sure but these were in effect the upgrade and the very nice headlamp that you could have had from the French manufacturer at the time things such as the lenses and the chrome they're all clearly original they're marked everything is exactly the way it should be totally untouched and never taken apart and the theme continues in the back in continuing our search for consistency on this car we start to notice certain elements like the wiring for instance behind this license plate light it's quite clearly very old very original cloth wrapped the right colours and it's in there really long time all the bolts are sort of like a little oxidized and they haven't had a wrench to them and quite some time so you know it's these sort of things that say I think this car has never ever been taken apart or touched to any effect the other thing we can always do is meter a car and this gets a little scientific so we're going to measure then the paint thickness on the metal and if there was any bondo or multiple layers of paint the meter readings will be a lot higher so on a car like this if it does have original paint it should be pretty low on the fender we have 3.7 and I think if you put a meter to almost any mga you're not gonna see a number like that if we continue on the shroud 6.8 and on the decklid 35.7 so from this we can sort of deduce that the trunks probably been painted at some point they might have blended into the shroud but the fender remains original paint and this isn't exactly uncommon if the car was delivered from the factory and had a scratch maybe they painted it or maybe an owner at some point damaged it and had it painted but in either case it's not from being rusty it's not from an accident and we know this because if we dig deeper and we go on the inside of the trunk and trunk and feel the interior panels we can see that everything is as original and as delivered between that and this highly original license plate bracket still with the original wiring untouched means that it was likely something minor and repaired as we go to the interior let's stop for a moment and take a real close look at these wheels that wheel arc as well as the tire so you'll notice that the metal if you run your finger along the edge of the wheel art it's sharp and thin and that's what you want in any car regardless of its original or burst or that means that the metal is nice and thin that it's simply primer than paint if it's not then and you put your hand back here and it feels rounded or sloppy in any fashion it's probably because there's lots of bondo or the work that was completed was not done very well so in this particular car we have the benefit of knowing just by touching it that that metal is original thin and you've got primer then paint moving to the wheel we can see here that there's a little bit of oxidation a little bit of age but these holes are nice and thin and they're they're a little sharp actually which is what you want to see layers and layers of paint over time to make them look shiny and new again will actually cause a lot of that to become rounded and soft so you know these rules clearly have never been touched the tires while not original of the car because the Heritage certificate designates that it had Dunlop Road speeds it now carries Michelin's Michelin X's to be exact which would have been a appropriate period replacement these are probably I would say maybe from the 1970s judging by the way that they look and feel they're cracked throughout but they have a nice old look and they go really well with this car I wouldn't change the tires in fact if you ever thought you wanted to drive this car I think removing the wheels and tires and putting replacements on just for the purposes of use would probably be the smartest idea before we go all the way in the interior let's take a look at this door jamb continuing that same theme of thin metal and nice clean edges take a look at the inside of this door it's nicely crimped followed up with a little bit of spot welds from the factory everything is clean thin and again red oxide primer where there are flaws or scratches this Valvoline oil change sticker from Oney otta New York yep Oneonta New York suggests that the last oil change was eleven thousand nine seventy-five given that we know the ownership history that there was a lot happening in only out in New York with this car that makes sense and it's nice to see an old sticker like this in the jamb the only other thing that's out of place and not original the car is this reflector this is the sort of thing you might buy in the back of Road & Track magazine or some sort of accessory magazine in period and it was probably for you know so that other cars could see you if you're opening your door on a busy street and this came out well they would see this and they would hopefully swerve and avoid taking off your door I can only assume that's what that's for but it's clearly been there a long time and it's not worth removing as we get into the interior it's almost hard to take step after step because you keep seeing things that you've never seen before that you've always wanted to see on an mga or maybe a different car things like this sort of little finisher for the door pocket this is little metal finisher and it's perfectly worn just right here right where someone's arm might touch or leg might touch what were you going in out of to get things just incredible the other thing is this trim piece right here that's supposed to have this sort of felt which it does up here but here all the felts worn off now that's a really big deal because most people would have at some point or another would have thought well it's really worn out I should replace it but no one ever replaced it so as a result it's perfectly original yeah it's worn out but it just speaks to how genuine this car is with that comes as rubber molding that used to be in the shape of like a tube let's say and it would run the length of the door jamb it was the weather seal so this rubber weather seal is no longer a tube and rather it's flat and and a little gooey actually from heat over the course of time but it's all still there absolutely incredible as we dig deeper the seats are the obvious place I mean look at the patina on them it's like a perfect 16 thousand miles worth of us-- we're cracking suppleness I mean this is the epitome of what you want to find in a good original pair of seats I can't say enough good things about them take a close close look at this you'll notice that it went from a red to an orange but if we follow the cockpits around at the very back you'll notice that it's still perfectly red there now what do you do when you're driving a sports car put your arm right here you hold the steering wheel like this and you're just going for 16,000 miles you probably went like this and as a result the sweat from your arm deteriorated the color on this and it's no longer the red that it used to be really incredible just another thing that shows you that this thing was used enjoyed and it was left alone just at six to one thousand miles or fifteen 9:49 as it shows there'll be something in looking across the dash everything looks highly original to me with the exception of the Stuart Warner ant meter which I don't think these cars ever got one to begin with it was likely in addition at some point if you look under the dash there's also this little analog clock again definitely doesn't belong there but looks like it's been there a long time and it's kind of a quirky feature perhaps the brightest most interesting thing to look at is the steering wheel these factory competition or works steering wheels as they're often referred to are extremely rare this has the feeling of a nice original I do not think that it's ever been used on another car and has probably been here since now just by sort of the inspection of it the Blau punked radio would have been a dealer installed accessory in period this would have just had a plate over it and when you bought the car new you could have chosen a radio and had it and stopped but everything else here is as it should be as delivered relatively untouched everything has a bit of dirt in the letters for instance and has a little bit of fading to it not not a ton but just enough that it seems real and genuine the only other thing I've seen here that doesn't belong to the car but you could have had in period if you wanted to order it is all of these sort of AAMCO accessories the wind wings on either side as well as these visors for the Sun that's a period accessory that a lot of people install back then and today when cars are restored those are often removed and they're considered non original so people don't put them back on but I think it adds a nice touch one thing I just noticed around this gauge you can see a sort of melted rubber gasket where the gauge went into the dash and the rubber has since melted and depressed and it looks old and fantastic this is what I'm talking about this car you keep noticing more and more and more and it compounds and you start to realize how significant the condition really is let's dive a little deeper into this interior to inspect even more points of originality so the first thing we're going to do does remove the seat bottom if you take it out and you study the underside of the seat you start to realize that there is no way this could have ever been duplicated in a restoration not to this level and especially not with this amount of aging and patina to it you can see that the foam rubber on the inside the seat is deteriorating it flakes off rather easily and turns into a powder that's the reality of something that's never been touched since 1962 the way that the upholstery is fitted to the seat bottom the design the little cobwebs all the staples and the stitching and everything goes together so nicely and then to finish it off with this beautiful leather that is aged to perfection I mean it just doesn't get any better this really truly is the epitome of patina and preservation and all the things that you look for our original car if we hold the seat forward and if you take a close look at the seat belts right there model 100-200 1961 made in Everett mass so if you figure the car was sold new out of New York and the seat belts are from Everett Mass there's probably a dealer install accessory now mark twos are specific about the seat belt points because they're actually right here as you can see they're right in the frame where they should be and these are sort of aftermarket holes that were drilled and they were put there in periods so either the originals were never installed and they were put there instead or they were removed and put there instead so we don't know but it does have the correct mark - seat belt mounting points if we take this peel it back you can see just how untouched this area is there's like the seam sealer here and there's all this original metal and black paint I mean it's just it's one of those things I can describe it to you in detail as long as I'd like but unless you see it you'll never really get the true character of what it is I'm talking about it really is untouched moving into the footwell take out this period mat and we'll take a real close look at these carpets clearly original all the correct snaps are still in place all of the bolt heads everywhere are the correct width even though the writing on them that they're supposed to have I mean it just gets so detailing you can go so far for so long but we'll cut right to the chase let's go to the most important aspect of what it is we're looking for so if we take this up and we take out the sound deadening and there it is the chassis number sitting right there stamped into the frame and you notice there's no paint in the chassis number and that's because they painted all the frames black sent them down the line and then they stamped the chassis number right into them thereby removing the paint and here we have exactly that so we know if this car has never been a part never painted because the chassis number has no pain in it it's right down to the metal and it's even a little rusted just very nice to see while we're under here take a look at the underside of this - there's hoses and wires just the way that they're supposed to be there's clamps there's the heater box there's the structure of the car and where there's not black paint there's red oxide primer just the way it's supposed to be it's not something you see all the time but in this particular car yeah Wow even the original biopunk speaker is still tucked under there from when they installed this dealer accessory radio what car and of course look how nice that door shuts perfect let's go to the engine bay now in here is we're gonna find all sorts of things that tell a story because it's in here where the most things get replaced where the most things get used up and where the most wear and tear really happens there's lots of heat there's lots of temperature fluctuation in general and there's always Expendables so there's filters that have to be changed there's clamps and hoses that have to be changed as radiator caps that have to be changed so as a result over the course of time lots of things go missing they get taken off things that are inconvenient to put back on like this nice rubber seal or these grommets or this rubber seal or even this incredible absolutely crowd I'm just noticing this for the first time this incredible sort of rubber hook that's holding the heater box cable to this hose just to secure it and then I've never even seen it before but you know these are the things that go missing because they're in the way so you take them off and you do the repairs you need to and you put stuff back but you don't bother with stuff like that a lot of time in so cars that you often see are incomplete something stands out to me right away as this valve cover you can see a little bit of red right here but in its current state it's been taped off you can see where they taped it off and they shot it with sort of a crinkle coat finish I can only assume the person who bought this new one at a ferrari or at a minimum admired ferrari and decided you know what I want crinkle coated valve covers too or in this case one valve cover so they did it but if you look closer absolutely correct clamps in many many places wire type throughout and if you look at this heater hose and you look at this intake hose here there's still the original fiber material sort of like a cardboard fiber material and there they're intact and there's no holes in them they're not split open or broken and they still have their original clamps I mean this this engine bay is unrepeatable I've never seen one like it in my life in terms of and jabo the other thing and this is specific to a mark to deluxe and it goes with the four-wheel disc brakes is this master cylinder which you would find normally on a twin cam because of the brakes but here you go you have it right here the wiring is tidy the washer bottles still there and correctly finished and it's blue holder even the original key is still bolted to the firewall right right where it's supposed to be or the heater box mounts the original key is still bolted there absolutely over the top love it I mean just everything about it is you could spend the whole day just in here admiring what's here there's really nothing missing that I can see and again wherever there's a scratch there's red oxide primer especially under the hood to get real close you can see where they were they missed when they were spraying at the factory going all fast you can see right where they missed because that was a reality they were cranking these things out and as a result not everything got black were it should have but what's left is right outside primary really something now that you know a little bit more about the mga mark 2 deluxe you'll probably be able to spot one in the wild you look right for those disc wheels at a show or maybe at a rally who knows but take a closer look I highly doubt you'll find one in this condition with original paint original interior and really that's everything to find a car that is both rare but also original doesn't happen every day and it's that condition that separates everything in this hobby for more cars like this follow us on instagram at LBI limited check out the website lvl limited comm or give one of us a call you'd never know what's around the corner

Channel: LBI Limited

Views: 8,754

Rating: 4.816092 out of 5

Keywords: lbi limited, claimyourclassic, claim your classic, mg a, mg, original, original paint, original paint mg a, british cars, original paint british cars, original interior, twin cam, mg a deluxe, deluxe, classic cars, collector cars, vintage cars, english cars, classic english cars

Id: ECWQOg8-dQY

Length: 27min 59sec (1679 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 25 2019