Perhaps best known for it’s two seater sports cars 0f the 1970’s, this great British marque started life as far back as 1923.
Summary
William Morris owned a garage in Longwall Street, London. From here he sold his own brand of Morris cars. In 1921 he appointed car designer Cecil Kimber as the dealership’s sales manager, promoting him to General Manager in 1922. Soon after Kimber began producing his own special versions of Morris Cars.
It’s often debated as to when the first MG’s were produced, but the first cars that were effectively Morris models with a different body, using coachwork from Carbodies of Coventry were badged MG and Morris.
The famous octagon badge first appeared in an Oxford newspaper in November 1923 and was registered as a trademark by Morris Garages in May 1st 1924.
By 1928 MG had become a large enough company to justify it’s own separate identity. In March of that year cars were produced under the MG badge and by July 1930 the MG Car Company as it was now known was listed as a limited company.
Cecil Kimber remained with MG until 1941, when he fell out with William Morris over procuring wartime work and was summarily dismissed. Kimber was tragically killed in the February 1945 Kings Cross Railway accident.
Now things get a little more complicated. William Morris was still the owner of MG. However he sold MG in 1935 to Morris Motors (a part of his Morris Organisation, that would later be known as the Nuffield Organisation). This lead to a change of direction for the company as it’s product range was changed to re-badged Wolseley and Morris products.
By now, MG was nothing more than a marque used by BLMC, and from about 1972, the name “M.G. Car Company Limited” ceased to be used, although still in existence producing it’s famous MGB two seater sports car range Midget and MGB GT from 1962 until 1980 at it’s Abingdon factory.
As a brand despite producing it’s cars MG was absorbed along with Morris in 1952 into BMC (British Motor Corporation) which itself was a merger of Morris Motors Ltd and the Austin Motor Company.
Several other mergers of motor manufacturers occurred including Jaguar with BMC in 1966 to become British Motor Holdings and yes they still produced those sports cars. Two years later MG had another owner when in 1968 BMH merged with the Leyland Motor Corporation to become British Leyland Motor Corporation.
In 1975 following partial nationalisation BLMC became British Leyland. MG sports cars were still rolling off the production line but suffered from a lack of investment so there were no new models. The last of those famous two seaters rolled off the production line in 1980.
In 1982, after a two year hiatus, MG were back (sort of). Between 1982 and 1991, the MG brand was used to badge-engineer sportier versions of Austin Rover’s Metro, Maestro and Montego models, the latter becoming the fastest mass production car of it’s time.
More changes of owners came as BL became the Rover Group in 1986 and then sold to British Aerospace in 1988, under which the first all new MG in it’s own right was launched in 1992.
The MG RV8 effectively an updated version of the famous two seater sports car with a Rover V8 engine, began a limited production run in 1993.
Another change of ownership to BMW in 1994 saw another all new MG two seater sports car in the form of the mid engineered MG F.
When another change of ownership occurred in 2000 as BMW sold the business (excluding mini) to the Phoenix consortium for just £1. Now branded MG Rover Group the company continued the production of the MG F alongside MG versions of it’s other models.
The group went into administration in 2005 and that appeared to be the end of the line.
Where Did They Go?
In July 2005 Chinese company Nanjing Automobile Group purchased the rights to the MG brand along with other assets of the MG Rover Group (except the production line for the ZS model) for £53 million, creating a new company called NAC MG UK.
After this nothing happened until 2011 when the company renamed MG Motor following merger of Nanjing Automobile with Shanghai Automobile Industry Corporation (SAIC). In 2011, MG Motor launched a new model, the MG6 GT (hatchback) and Magnette (saloon), which were the first new-generation MGs available in the UK since the MG TF.
Today MG produce a range of electric, hybrid and petrol cars from the small MG3 to the SUV MGZS.
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