IDRIVEACLASSIC reviews: 70s MGB Roadster

i am so excited to announce that idrava classic is now sponsored by adrian flux one of the uk's leading classic car insurers if you're looking for classic car insurance i've popped a link to adrian flux in the description box below hi guys it's steph from idriver classic and today i'm back with what many of you will consider a proper classic the mgb roadster now in tree i drive a classic style we are vastly unprepared for this so it's a snowy day it's very cold so we're not taking the hood down but we're gonna give this car a good once over very excited to show you it belongs to a very good friend of mine to be very nice in the comments and if you recognize the number plate it's in the trailer for it's a sin so not only is she a decent classic she's also a bit of a celebrity so let's kick off and have a look around the mgb is instantly recognizable as one of those cars that people would call a proper classic it was made between 1962 and 1980 although it was only available as a roadster until 1965 when the mgb gt was released the mgb was the replacement for the mga and interestingly as it was designed largely by don hayter it was a car designed to fit a growing market which was the affordable sports car market so it's a really interesting time where people had gone maybe kind of 10 years prior for it being quite a you know quite a luxury to have one car to this era that was coming in where people with a little bit more money were having a car as standard and having something special for the weekend now the mgb was originally sold with chrome bumpers and that's how a lot of people think of it when they think of the mgb but like many cars of the 50s and 60s it was modified to meet the legal requirements of the american market hence the change over to rubber bumpers now for those of you interested in cars changing over to meet american regulations another really good example that you can think of quite quickly is the morris miner so originally that was a low-light car but when they decided to go to market in america that's when they switched to the highlight and it was literally just to meet the criteria of the time nothing else but i think it's very interesting how even british cars of the time were changing quite considerably to meet that market even though really british cars weren't a big thing because america had its own thing going on now the bumpers weren't the only thing that changed for the us market because when it went to the us it also went on heightened suspension the reason for this was to bring the headlight level up and that was again to make sure it met those guidelines at launch the mgb was fitted with the bmc b series engine we've talked a lot about this actually in previous videos so it was fitted things like the marina and i believe we spoke about it in the austin cambridge video as well it was a really popular engine for the time and for those not familiar because i know some of you may not be it's a straightforward engine producing 95 brake horsepower and has an estimated fuel consumption of around 25 miles per gallon although i have seen people get a lot more out of those so that's perhaps a little bit on the conservative side however not resting on their laurels in 1967 mg introduced the mgc and this was available as a roadster and gt configuration and featured the larger 2.9 liter c series six cylinder now that was capable of a whole lot more because you got 0 to 60 in 10 seconds and a top speed of 120 miles per hour following on from this in 1973 the mgb was available with a 3.5 liter rover v8 and this was available until 1976 although what you gained in power you lost in fuel economy because this was only generating around 20 miles per gallon transmission on these between 62 and 67 was a full speed manual box with a straight cut non-synchro first gear and overdrive was an optional extra this was carried over from the mga but it did have a few upgrades and changes because of course with that b series engine it needed to cope with that additional output in 68 the box became fully synchro which was based on that mgc a three-speed auto was also offered but wasn't really a popular choice because why would you buy sports can't put an automatic into it different grills were used on these throughout the lifespan of the mgb from the chrome slatted grille featuring the mg octagon to the less desirable fish mouth recess grill to the honeycomb grill now all the cars between 1962 and 1974 you can change those grilles about but anything post 74 rubber bumper era you can't just change the earlier grilles around on a straight swap wheels on these again change throughout production earlier cars had the well had either the wire wheels or the hubcap wheels and later mgbs sported the british leyland ross style wheels which were fitted until the end of production in 1980 now a really popular mod that people do nowadays is put mini lights on these but mini lights are perhaps my most hated wheel so if you have got these on for goodness sakes go for one of the nicer options and finally if you pick an mgb you'll be in very good company of many celebrities who've picked one too including sting richard hammond prince charles who i think had an mgc which he later gave to prince william bill wyman george best and of course one of my favorite actresses the fabulous joanna lumley now i'm going to hand over to my friend kev who will tell you a little bit about his mgb if you watch our driver classic regularly this won't be a new phase because kevin and i have worked on many videos together including the recent uh the recent cylinder head video so uh yes over to you kev and tell us a little bit about your mgb hi there my name's kevin hurst and this is my 1971 mgb mgb roadster i've owned the car for about five years and done quite a lot of work to it i've converted it to overdrive put poly bushes on it reconditioned radiator all the things that you do with oak car to try and make them good put electronic ignition on it etc i use it quite a lot in all weathers it's absolutely blooming freezing today as in january happy new year to one and all um we go away with it my wife and myself for weekends away we've got the yorkshire dales quite a bit and all over the place it's out and about all the time obviously not last year hardly used at all last year regrettably uh it's been mainly used for a lot of film work it's been in mamma mia 2 where i had to drive it down to oxford for for an absolutely amazing shoot that i've never seen anything like that before in my life it was a massive and lots of other things briefing a brief encounter uh it's just recently been on the program it's a sin filmed in manchester extensively on that just as a background just as a background vehicle i'll use it every single day it's completely reliable i absolutely absolutely love it and the my first memories of mgbs was when i was a seven-year-old child and my favorite program at the time was called the new avengers and i remember purdy driving a sangler rubber bumper mgb and i thought well both i got very excited i don't know whether it was purdy or the mgb it was probably the mgb i would have i would have thought but but that's basically that's basically it it's a work in progress it's not perfect but it's used every single day if necessary i intend to re-spray it this year and and that's it so coming inside this car today i wanted to highlight a few little bits that i thought were quite interesting and i thought were unexpected on this car because of course when this car was sold it was sold as an affordable sports car it wasn't something that was totally out of reach with millions of people like an e-type drag for example it was something that people could aspire to in a way that they might actually achieve it it wasn't just a bit of a pipe dream now one of the things that i really liked first of all was the map light it's one of those things that for a car that you were maybe taking on adventures and away with you that you would definitely want and next to that we have the glove box this is disappointingly small but really look at the size of the car and look at how much space we've got to play with is kind of what we would expect complete with a super comfort brochure i'm hoping to god we don't need any breakdown cover today from them on the front of that we've got some christopher you may have spotted that was actually kev's granddad's and he remembered it as a child and so it's brought it into here which it's actually quite a sweet touch now coming into the center we've got these two big plastic dials i do like the chrome finish on those actually very nice detailing now these control our heater so in terms of how hot it is and the direction of the heat as well now these three switches we've got the heater is your first one the one in the middle that's your wipers you've got two speed wipers next to that is this push button and that is for your window washers i've got that on the morris miner and let me tell you it's so annoying i hate it mine person is being converted over to one of those switches like that so it runs um on electric then it's much better um but hey ho the car's very original so it's nice to see next to that is the only unoriginal item which is the cigar lighter so that's been put in a later date next to that we've got the choke the water temperature gauge and above that we have got the pull for the lights coming in front of us we've got two dials so we've got our speedo to the left and to the right we have got our rev counter and in the center of that we've got this little turning switch thing and this is actually for our panel light so it just controls how bright it is and one stop one stalk which is obviously our indicators and in the middle we have got our horn so i'll push that for you and then over to the right we have got our fuel gauge and we have got our overdrive so the overdrive is something that kev put in himself and i'll talk to you a little bit about that as we drive along now before we get us started up and i'm sure you're dying to hear that b series engine we're just gonna have a quick walk through the gearbox and uh then we'll be ready to head off now give you a quick whistle stop tour through the box it's exactly as you'd expect which check my neutral there it does need quite a firm hand to guide it in no pun intended so bring that across and show you it's quite a notchy box actually but it's not too bad once you get the hang of it and you're out driving and of course got that overdrive but i'll show you that when we go out for a drive so let's start the car up and you can hear what she sounds like [Music] [Music] so let's set off in first gear and try and get some of that overdrive action in as well so this is probably a lot snowier than uh most mgb roadster drivers are out in today um now when i picked this for a test drive in the summer i definitely didn't see it eventually going around to it when there was snow on the ground but you know what the m2b roadster was built for adventure and i feel like this is a bit of adventure as we go through these snowy roads although as we approach some of these villages actually it is starting to uh disappear now immediately when i got into the car there were a few things that i liked and a few things that i didn't so i wanted to talk to you about them both and explain my reasons why so what do i like about the cars let's focus on the positives so the first thing is is that b series is something i'm very familiar with under the bonnet but when you could take it from something like the land crab or from the morris marina where it gives it enough power and you feel like you've got enough get up and go and you put it into something like this well it's that excitement that i enjoyed in that marina to the power of 10. it's so nippy now as we drive along you'll see that it's very responsive and it's handy in terms of sticking to the road it's just you only have to move the steering wheel the slightest amount and in a base command immediately it's beautiful to drive however however the thing that i don't like about it is the steering is so heavy now i imagine that when we're out and about on these amazing adventures that we're now going on in this mgv roadster that isn't too much of a problem because we're not going to be maneuvering in and out of spaces or tight jams but if i was to take this to a multi-storey and try and reverse park it i imagine that some of the joy would wear off pretty quickly it's very very heavy another thing that i'm not too keen on is how low we are to the ground so of course that is your standard positioning for a sports car but for me i'm going to be honest i'm not keen i much prefer cars when they feel a bit higher off the ground now because if you have driven a later mgb with the rubber bumpers you'll know that they are a little bit slower than this now the reason for that is of course is those rubber bumpers do weigh more um and they updated the suspension as well so that coupled with the rubber bumpers meant that the cars were a lot heavier and therefore aren't quite as frightly as these chrome bumper examples it's been quite it's been quite a fun drive today showing you around um and showing you a bit of where i live as well because i never really take you guys out and show you what it's like i really hope you've enjoyed the video it's been such a pleasure thank you kev for this mgb and until next time take care and drive safely [Music]

Channel: idriveaclassic

Views: 21,833

Rating: 4.9289241 out of 5

Keywords: MGB review, MGB roadster, B series engine, MGC, MGB driving, MGB road test, classic car country driving, driving in Yorkshire, sports car road test, classic sports car review, classic sports car road test, mGB overdrive, MGB GT, MGB sports car review, classic MG, MG review, MG road test, 70s MG sports car, celebrity sports car, fast sports car review, British sports car road test, British sports car review, racing British sports car, MG racing, pedal revving

Id: lu_Hwh5fMjI

Length: 16min 14sec (974 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 21 2021