MG Manawatu

 

Hi everyone, we are now back in NZ after a wonderful 3 month touring holiday of Great Britain and of course we had to include some MG activities into our itinerary!

Our first MG stop was in Abingdon, where we visited Kimber House, the home of the MG Car Club. We arrived unannounced but Julian White, the club’s general manager gave us a wonderful reception showing us around the club where we saw the board room, the archives (with many old factory records going back to the early days for each car), reception area where they have a display of MG models and collectables including items that belonged to MG’s founder Cecil Kimber amongst other things. We were also introduced to other members of the club staff including Andy & Chris who are responsible for the great Safety Fast magazine each month. We also met Brian Woodhams the club’s overseas director amongst others. Again everyone was very friendly and welcoming.  After a cuppa we then visited the Abingdon Business Park situated on the site of the factory and inside one of the new buildings are two huge carpet tile murals as a reminder of what used to be on this site – one of an MGF and the other of Old No.1. Even though we are members of the club from the other side of the world we were instantly made welcome and felt straight away we belonged – great!

We then visited the Abingdon museum, where on the top floor there is a small museum dedicated to MG. This display is largely down to one man, Brian Moylan, a well known former employee at the Abingdon factory and many of the exhibits on display belonged to him. We were fortunate to meet Brian there and had a great conversation about many of the MG items there. There was lots of MG curios, race trophies, rally plates and also the fur coat that Cecil Kimber used to wear around the factory and also the brief case with the initials C.K. on it that he had with him when he was tragically killed. There was a display of factory SST’s – Special Service Tools, including a long bar with a square fork on one end that was evidently used for adjusting door hinges…..! Our thanks to Brian and the members of  The Abingdon Works Centre for again giving us such a great reception. Also in Abingdon we visited The Boundary House, now a pub, but previously was Cecil Kimber’s home and at the pretty little village of Clifton Hampden we visited The Barley Mow, another pub frequently used by MG in the early years in its publicity shots.

Next on the itinerary was a visit to The British Motoring Heritage Centre at Gaydon. What an impressive display! There are all sorts of British cars from all eras on display and there are many MG models exhibited including rare prototypes and the record breaking cars along with an MGB GT that has been cut in half and was used to promote the MGB at motorshows when it was originally launched. William Morris (Lord Nuffield) also had his office moved there & recreated from the original buildings that it occupied for many years. Easy to spend a day in there and we were given a very informative insight to many of the MG’s on display there from a man who worked on the RV8 project.

As we travelled around we visited some other motoring museums some of which had some interesting MG exhibits including the Cotswolds Museum at Bourton on the Water and the Lakeland Motor Museum that had an original MGA Police car.

Next was a visit to the MG Owners Club at Swavesey where we had a look around their facilities including their impressive workshop and parts facilty.

Then the big event – 3 days of MG magic to finish off our trip at MG Live! at Silverstone. What a great event! If you are visiting the UK when this is on then I would strongly urge you to attend. You can check out some of the action at www.mglive.com . The weekend included a full programme of racing, aerobatic displays, precision driving demonstrations, COY’s motor vehicle auction, MG’s of every make, model and year imaginable (estimated to be at least 3000 MG’s on site along with 20,000 visitors!), Trader City – parts and accessories galore. All the MG club registers had displays and information as well. We had no trouble filling in all 3 days we were there. Once again we were very warmly welcomed by the MG Car Club staff who remembered us from our club visit 2 months earlier. We met many interesting people and heard some great tales of ownership – amazing how long some cars have stayed with the same owner and have retained so much originality. The B & B (www.lindencottagewhittlebury.co.uk) we stayed at just 5 minutes away was fantastic (if you go and want a great place to stay I can highly recommend this one) and had other MG enthusiasts staying over the weekend. If you are a member of the MGCC (Abingdon) you may recall an article in Safety Fast some time ago about an RV8 in the Cayman Islands that was basically under the sea due to a huge storm. The car was brought back to the UK for restoration and was with one of the couples (Ken & Sheila) staying at our B&B so we had a very interesting chat all about it! I think Ken was most impressed that I had read about his car and knew about it in NZ! You can read and see pictures of this most interesting project here: http://www.v8register.net/subpages/RV8resorationproject190807.htm

Finally whilst we were in Oxford we visited Longwall Street where the original Morris Garage buildings from 1912 still stand just as they were all those years ago. What a history lesson!

No doubt that MG – The Marque of Friendship – is alive and well and the many wonderful MG people we met helped make all the difference to our visit. Even though we are not an official MG Club, everyone including the UK MGCC were very supportive of us and the way we are supporting and promoting MG through our own activities.

As you can imagine we took many, many photos and I have added just a few to the gallery page for you all to enjoy.

Dom & Jen

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