The MGB GT was a Poor Man's Aston Martin

few Sports carss have captured the motoring world in the same way as the MGB it was an unassuming little sports car whose Beauty lied in its Simplicity and like many of the Great sports cars through history it had a kind of performance that really goes beyond the spec sheets but for me there's one version of the MGB the pen and finina design GT version that I believe is one of the greatest and most beautiful Grand Touring designs of all time often referred to especially in silver form as kind of a mini James Bond car for the way it apparently looks like the Aston Martin DB5 that comparison is of course ludicrous the MGB GT is a far better looking Coupe it's also more fun to say MGB GT or as my kids say MGB gbt gbb before we get too far into this story I want to give credit to the source for much of this information in a book that I cannot recommend enough MGB the complete story by Brian Lebon if you guys want to learn more about the MGB and its history and Development I've got a link in the description below it's incredibly well researched and thorough so check it out give it a buy it's a great addition to any Automotive library and if you like old British cars you will learn a ton all right let's jump in prior to the b car mg was on a bit of a roll with their sports cars known for coupling looks and performance in an amazingly affordable sort of Roadster package and really being known for simply evolving in the right areas while also taking leaps forward in others prior to the MGB there was the MGA and before that there was the and T type cars in many ways the MGB is the car that really took mg to the world with over 100,000 mgas being sold over its lifetime with most of those going to the US of course prior to that car even mg had really begun making a name for themselves in postwar America with their ever evolving platform and specifically the TC and then really the TD American GIS had found these little sports cars during the war while they were overseas and when they came home they longed for the experiences that they had on these cars that were really so different than what were being offered in America and that really created demand for these kind of fun affordable awesome simple little sports cars though different in form all of the cars prior to the MGB shared the identity which made mg great which is a focus on performance quality and really just fun motoring at an affordable price as I've said in other videos MG made kind of everyman's sports car cars now the MGA which first debuted in 1955 was a new type of modern sports car for the company made in the style and design of mg's long-standing tradition of record-breaking streamliners and capable of 100 Mil per hour low and small but really roomy for what it is beautiful and curvy but affordable and easily upgraded for racing with the versatile 1500 and then 1600cc B series straight 4 this car was lightweight it had fantastic handling and it was just really cool the MGA was the kind of dream sports car that you could actually attain with a bit of saving and it really sold like hot cakes but times changed quickly in the competitive sports car market especially at this time and by the early 1960s MGA sales were already falling and falling drastically but MGR already had the mga's replacement slow cooking in the form of the radically Innovative allnew MGB if the MGA was a step forward for the company from their previous T type models the MGB would be a Leap Forward at first glance you might think that the B and the a have more in common than the a does with the T types in terms of styling that would be true but Underneath It All the MGB was a completely new type of car for the company some point to it as one of the first monoco production cars in all reality it was actually a unibody car which is slightly different regardless this was truly a step forward for the industry as a whole much in the same way as you know Triumph putting disc brakes on production sports cars the unibody construction of the MGB where the chassis and the body are essentially connected would prove incredibly capable and really overbuilt suitable as a platform even for large engines including the later V 6 and then V8 versions of the car unibody construction versus body on frame is particularly good for sports cars as it lends itself to better handling also thanks to Independent front suspension and rack and pinion steering and in light of oncoming safety regulations the MGB would prove popular over cars like the big hey as it was both fun but also safer for those in the car this was one of the first cars ever to feature what we now call crumble zones coupled with the better performance and more reliable five main bearing version of the B series engine it was really a peach of a car and the general public couldn't get enough of it especially here in the US and the sales really proved this through its lifetime over half a million mgbs would leave the mg Factory with most of those going to the United States the MGB first existed in Roadster or convertible form only and the car was incredibly popular but in 1964 plans began to shape to make a grand tour version of the little Roadster now something special happens when you throw a hard top on an old British Roadster whether it's photoshopped like this big Healey made to look like a coupe or an aftermarket hard top like what was available for midgets or even a factory hard top like what could be had with the TR6 turning these roadsters into Grand Touring cars just transforms the overall look in a really interesting way sometimes it works better on certain designs but there's no denying it always makes the car look and feel complet completely different but adding a hard top to a car that is meant to be a roadster only is never quite as good as when the manufacturer itself sets out to design a coupe version of their Roadster one of my favorite examples is the rare but beautiful MGA coupe the MGA being a car already known for its curves and its hips and then you throw on this bulbous top you end up with a vehicle that it's almost a caricature of its own style it's just utterly ridiculous and in my opinion it just looks fantastic now 20 months before the official MGB GT would be revealed jacqu a guy known for modifying production cars and selling them built something called the berlinette MGB 1800 now if the MGB GT would be Aston martines this just was Aston Martin it looks in many ways like a copy of the DB5 with the way the headlights are in the rear and at 480 lbs extra it was actually a pretty good deal if you wanted to get one but in this form the car just didn't look like the MGB anymore obviously mg would take a different approach officially called project ex 227 the MGB GT was really meant not only to give the be a hard top there's more to it than that in many ways successful GTS though still very much the same car they need to feel like different cars from their top- down counterparts and this one certainly would enter pinen Farina now if you don't already know pin and finina was and is an Italian automotive design firm creating some of the most iconic and beautiful car designs of the 20th century working with the likes of Ferrari and known for cars like the 250 GT and the Alpha Romeo Spider amid struggles at MG to work out the coupe version of the car primarily trying to bring together a practical top for this curvy car I mean as you can probably guess that Coupe version of the MGA was anything but practical but this needed to be different mg was at a point where they were so popular they couldn't afford to make in Practical cars if the MGB was going to have a GT version it had to make sense and it had to fully be committed to what GT cars are about finally they just decided to send the project to pin andrina with the goal of having them combine a more angular top to the curvy lower half but it had to be a fully cohesive consistent design which is no simple task but this wasn't entirely a new task for pin and finina they had designed the special Ed Coupe version of the Austin Healey 3000 and the influence there is pretty clear on the MGB GT this too was a very angular roof line paired to a pretty curvy car what pen and finina brought back to mg was a clear winner and they went straight to building the car without question or really any need for revision this design embodies everything you need for a car to be attractive it has a Simplicity that really only the best of designers could achieve if you look at the great and iconic car designs through history most of them are pretty simple and the most appealing and recognizable ones they're often you know very just kind of sleek and simple when I think about the best looking trucks of all time I think about something like you know a Ford from the' 60s and man that's literally just straight lines just the simplest design and it looks so good but the MGB GT would also do some of the things that the regular MGB just couldn't which is give the car more room more storage and just more space in general and just more usability now something interesting happens when you add a fully stressed top to a convertible see a convertible in unibody form is as Brian Lebon says in his book on the MGB like an eggshell immensely strong when it is complete but loses out considerably once it has been opened so more rigidity is gained when you close the top of that eggshell giving you the potential to free up weight from the bottom side of the car car now if the GT hadn't been rushed to production there were all sorts of options that they could have done but in the end the GT ended up really a slightly heavier but in some ways stronger MGB now Ford would take the Fastback concept to a sort of Fuller degree with the Capri and that car would give the GT troubles in terms of sales for its lightweight and its performance and its really spacious interior and storage like so many other British sports cars and roadsters often they're just wasn't the money or resources to bring these Concepts to their best conclusion the MGB GT now had a rear seat large enough to fit a small cat or maybe a child that you didn't much care for I wonder how many adults have ever been squeezed into the back of an MGB GT it just doesn't look like it would work in terms of performance the rear suspension was stiffened up a bit and was also given wider tires to handle the extra rear weight but still maintain the handling that the car was known for it was also given as standard a front anti rollar overall the car weighed about 250 lb more than the Roadster but it was more aerodynamic so it was only slightly slower in every category that counts for what it was it really wasn't a lesser car which is pretty impressive upon release the car's reception was incredibly positive the little Roadster had a sort of new identity in the GT a kind of stately professional car that anybody regardless of class would be proud to drive drive and as I've always said both on this channel and also on my motorcycle Channel there seems to be a connection between building really awesome special vehicles and then pricing them as low as possible that seems to be the recipe for creating an instant hit this car came in at under 1,000 aside from it being more usable and in many people's eyes better looking along with those extra features this was a steal in many people's eyes now you did have to pay extra if you wanted things like a heater but you know who needs that this idea of a GT version of a roadster being somewhat of a different car for a different audience proved true for mg's production in its first full year that is 1966 some 10,000 GTS were produced making only a small dent in Roadster production which was around 22,000 amazingly in the end of the mgb's run some 25% of all models were GTS which is really incredible and shows just how good and appealing this car was through its run the car was a succcess not because it was anywhere near the fastest or best GT available no it was just the most affordable and probably the best looking GT that you could get now I know there are people who disagree with that but for what it is it's such a greatl looking car and don't let sports car enthusiasts fool you this matters more than almost anything else if the car is fun and it looks good and it's cheap then it's a winner sadly the GT's life would end short in the us due to emissions regulations in the end it would die with its Roadster counterpart altogether along with much of the British sports car industry due to a lack of much needed development other less popular GTS would come out of the Abington Factory including the six-cylinder automatic mgc GT as well as the big V8 version of the car for various reasons despite still looking really great these cars just weren't popular the way that the original GT was due in part to their extra weight and also just less characteristically fun engines and of course a big increase in price and of course also competition in many ways the MGB GT was the first of a new kind of car if not somewhat accidentally and that type of car is the sporty hatch mg wanted their sports car to be a coupe but their sports car was so small and they made it so roomy with that big rear trunk in the end they basically created a hatchback one that would influence the design of many later popular hat hatchbacks John Thornley the director and manager of mg always said that he wanted to build a poor man's Aston Martin and no doubt the MGB GT was that car I love the idea of those running a company understanding its place in the market to such a degree that they know it's a sort of poor man's version of a much more impressive competitor's car I feel like that kind of awareness is just really important whenever I see these old British sports cars or even see my own old British sports car but especially the MGB GTS like all the ones that you see at for example the all British Field meet here in Portland that I like to take my kids to I'm just amazed how different these cars are than modern sports cars I feel the same way when I drive my mark1 and I'm not just referring to the lack of Comforts and Tech and Driver AIDS more than anything it's just the way these manufacturers viewed sport motoring and how these cars exemplified it I really feel like they got it and in a lot of ways we don't today the fastest best sports cars have far surpassed the level of fun sporty driving for the road these cars with upwards of a th000 horsepower can only really be enjoyed and pushed on the track and even there most of us would never be able to come even close to tapping into these cars potential but if sports cars are meant to be fun what's the point of all this performance and horsepower these cars aren't really all that fun and this is why the Mazda Miata has been such a massive success and it's why experts will tell you if you're looking to get a sports car for the road or even for the track you should probably just get a Miata I say all this because I feel like we need more poor man sports cars we need more cars like the MGB GT cars that are beautiful simple fun and sporty and more than anything affordable cuz most of us can't afford what BMW or Porsche or even Toyota has to offer for sports cars I can't even justify a num Miata at this point to be honest we need more sports cars from companies that get it companies that understand that a great sports car is not about the numbers on a spec sheet and having fun in a car is not about having more and more horsepower it's about having fun but it really doesn't seem like many companies are interested in going this route even though I feel like so many of them could make great little affordable sports cars so for me I'll just keep enjoying the oldies they're more fun they're more connected to the road and they're way cheaper all right guys thanks for watching I would love to hear from you guys if any of you owned an MGB or an MGB GT or really any old British car we'll see you guys in the next video drive safe

Channel: Bart's Car Stories

Views: 26,017

Keywords: car, cars, car history, car video, car videos, history of cars, automotive history, vehicle, automotive, car channel, bart, bart's car stories, car stories, story, mg, mgb, mgb gt, gt, mga, roadster, roadsters, british cars, british car, history of the mgb, greatest cars, best cars, best sports cars

Id: od3v9ieZtec

Length: 16min 42sec (1002 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 07 2023