We have seen quite a few rare and oddball cars in the storage yard thus far. This one is a little different; it’s an example of the most-mass produced roadster (pre-Miata), the MG-B. This particular car is from late in the production run and wears brown paint, which was curiously popular when these cars were new. I suppose the pin striping, also popular during that era, jazzes it up a bit, but personally speaking, I prefer to see sports cars painted in yellow, red, green, or at least something a bit brighter.
Like the other cars here, this one has spent a number of years parked outside, and its interior has suffered due to the absence of a rear window. Unlike its sedan field-mates, the parts to revive it can be found by simply opening a catalog; in fact, it’s likely that only classic Mustang or Camaro bits would be easier to obtain. Even so, it still might be this car’s fate to be parted out–that overdrive gearbox is quite desirable, and probably worth as much as the rest of the car. The updated dash pegs this one as a 1977-to-1980 model, which means it also has upgraded cooling as well as front and rear anti-sway bars.
These late MG-Bs are quite often known as the rubber-bumper Bs–which isn’t quite accurate, since the bumper is actually steel covered in polyurethane plastic. With the weight gain and increased ride height caused by the new bumpers, the B became more of a touring car than a sports car, but the changes can be back-dated easily.
I don’t care for the black monstrosity on the front but they can look nice painted the same color as the body. A new top will run you $300. I will say one good thing about the rubber-bumper Bs — a V6 swap is less painful than with the chrome bumper models.
Still see a lot of rubber bumper B’s tooling around. They’re not my favourite, but the owners certainly seem to enjoy them
This example is probably toast, or parts. There’s just too many inexpensive nice ones around to make a major project and stay above water.
I would catalog the MGB as the least reliable car I ever owned but some sort of repression makes me forget it continually. Then I see a picture of one and it all comes back. Bikers joke about the prince of darkness when talking about british electronics. I don’t who made the MG electronics but they rendered the car an electrician’s versus a mechanic’s project. Just saying… it can stay right where it is.
Brit auto electronics often came from Lucas Industries, the object of the sobriquet “Prince of Darkness.” Joke heard on the radio show Car Talk: “Why do the British drink warm beer? They have Lucas refrigerators.”
I remember an auto-electric shop replacing my ’67 MGB’s voltage regulator with one intended for an MGA, saying it would be more reliable.
Two perspectives on British cars:
1) Edwardian: Character-Building Experience, which teaches young men patience & perserverance;
2) Postwar: “Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way” [Pink Floyd]
Two tales of the Prince of Darkness:
In my ’64 MGB, (owned in 1972) a tail light wire shorted out to the metal cable clip. (No idea if the metal clip was ever rubber coated. Now, they use plastic.) The headlight fuse was in the circuit, but the $10.00 or so headlight switch blew to protect the $0.50 30A fuse. There were a total of 2 fuses for the electrics, both quite heavy. Not an ideal design.
In my ’60 TR3A, (owned in 1983) on a commute to work, I smelled burnt insulation, but the car kept running. The ignition line from the battery to a terminal heated up to the point where the insulation burned off. No fuses blown, and no further problems. As I recall, I kept a spool of wire in my kit and replaced the wire after work. Never did figure out what momentarily died.
I liked the B, loved the 3A, but was happy to turn each one into needed cash. “The two happiest days of the British car owner, the day you get it, and the day you sell it.”
We studied Lucas Electronics back in the day it was in a league of its own. They even sold their own smoke over the parts counter.
Lucas almost never used relays they sent everything through the switches. Also the sleeved connectors were unreliable.
They used fabric insulation a lot longer than anyone else. Positive ground systems which isn’t bad in and of itself but messed with people’s heads, and the WWII vintage designs.
It was like when I moved into my antique house and discovered all of the knob and post wiring.
The bottled smoke is a joke, right? Please say yes. Some things are so daft, it’s hard to know when folks are messing with you.
The other problem I usually had with MGB electrics (aside from going thru several alternators) was, four rather than two battery connectors could open the circuit. Now it made a lot of sense from a weight standpoint to put them under the rear shelf like that, but it still was a hassle.
There’s only one good thing to say about fabric insulation: If it burns, it’s less toxic than plastic. Of course this hardly matters when suffocation is the biggest killer in fires.
You don’t know about the Lucas Smoke Replacement Kit? Well smoke machines are popular in auto repair shops as a way of diagnosing vacuum leaks and other leaks of the like. So it would make sense that such a handy tool was made available to all crack British car owners who want to have more fun with their rides more than was already supplied by the factory. The idea was to replace the smoke so that it would escape again and one could pinpoint the trouble spot(s).
In 1989 (I got this story from someone in the heirarchy of Triumph Motorcycles at Hinckley) once Triumph had finalized the design for the upcoming 3- and 4-cylinder bikes that restarted them in the 90’s, they started meeting with potential suppliers to set up the production lines.
A representative from Lucas showed up, intent on bidding on the motorcycle’s electronics. He was promptly shown the door, not even allowed to make his presentation. He was also very bluntly told, “We can’t afford to put your components on our motorcycles anymore.”
In 1998, the second generation models used Sagem (French) fuel injection. It is my understanding that some sub-assembly in the unit came from Lucas, and the early production had the name stamped onto the parts. While the parts, when tested, were found to be well within expectations, the name was immediately ground off, and the supplier was told to see to it that it never happened again.
That black material used on these, like some Toyotas and others with black bumper covers turns an incredibly flat, deep black color as it weathers and ages that is not only gloss-free, but so dark it looks as if it would turn to powder if touched.
You couldn’t make paint any flatter.
As far as these cars go, they make our old 1992 LeBaron as finely made as a Rolex!
“Reliability” doesn’t exist as a word in the King’s English…
Own a Hinkley (1995-on) Triumph. Best damn made motorcycles in the world, even outdoes BMW. My ’95 Trident just went into the shop for it’s 114,000 mile service. And it only started costing me money around the 96,000 mile point.
They’ve learned.
What’s the green sedan next to the MGB? I’m guessing it looks like a late 50s Vauxhall Victor?
Yes the English 57 Chevy!That MG is a spectacularly horrid colour,Joe Lucas is reported to have said a gentleman has no need to be motoring after dark!
Yes – we’ve seen this one a little while ago.
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/curbside-classics-european/storage-field-classic-vauxhall-victor-f-series/
That colour is Russet Brown- the same as two of my Allegros. A great colour for a BL car, as it is conveniently the same colour as the steel underneath.
That said, the electrics aren’t that bad- its usually a case of bad earths or connectors- the problem is, over the past 30 years, every owner has ‘had a go’ trying to fix the original problem and thus created new ones, new wires in the wrong colour which makes the wiring diagram useless, and multiple bypasses that only they can remember.
I say ‘not that bad’ being the owner of a Rover p4, which uses screw-type terminals, brittle cotton shielded wiring, and disintegrated bakelite junction boxes. ’70s Lucas has nothing on ’60s Lucas.
I am unable to comprehend why anyone would buy one Allegro , never mind two !
I find it equally baffling why anyone would have abandoned this “B” to mother nature. A set of chrome bumpers and a respray would have made a nice car out of it, before the rot set in.
My Dad had 2!the first was in hearing aid beige,the second the same horrible colour as the MG.They were his last British cars,they needed topping up with electricity as well as petrol
I don’t know anything about the Allegro, but I love the music in this ad. Anyone know what song it is?
I’ll take this mg and also the tow truck behind it. once running (if ever) I will need the tow truck to retreive me I’d say at least once a week.
Late model MGs arent popular mostly because the US market demanded the ride height be raised to meet the stupid bumper regulations enacted there. Jo Lucas electrics are quite easy to understand and repair, I have a 59 Hillman that will start at the flick of the key every time. Just because Americans can not do simple maintenance you blame the manufacturer.
Kiwi, a friend and I had a discussion about British cars recently. We laughed pretty hard about Lucas electrics and all that. His final word on the merits of British cars are that they are…um, say… “delicate”…
And they also forget that most of those Lucas components they’re bitching about are 40+ years old.
When I was a kid in the ’70s, I spent a great deal of time pestering people that were working on their cars in their driveways. Most of those cars were MGs or Triumphs. They were worse when they were transportation than they are now as hobby cars.
Electrical systems shouldn’t require maintenance. How am I supposed to maintain a fuel pump? Practically every one I know of that has failed was a Lucas product, and a fairly low percentage of cars in the US have Lucas fuel pumps. If we’re so clueless, how did we manage to make cars that don’t require even simple maintenance? We were the UK’s most important export market for decades, but they never managed to make a car for US duty cycles. That’s a major failure. The American manufacturers, German manufacturers, and Japanese manufacturers all managed to build cars that met US expectations for dependability.
You kinda need to know what you’re in for with these cars. I daily drove my ’73 MGB-GT for a couple years (1977-78). The only recurring electrical malady was severe corrosion of the battery terminals. Two 6 volt batteries were hanging under the “back seat” and exposed to road grime. I had lots of mechanical breakdowns, including a broken front wheel bearing and snapped fingers on the clutch pressure plate. Hey, that’s why you keep a couple spare cars around.
It was generally a good car, another one of which I would gladly have today.
Same issue with the batteries I had, see above. In general my MGB experience wasn’t a nightmare, & to be fair it was over a decade old, but then I was young & had the time to fiddle with it, & a friend who could advise me.
So in all seriousness, & as I implied above, Brit car ownership might be considered part of a young man’s education, provided he is patient, has some mech. ability, & doesn’t have a lot of time commitments. You do learn a lot; I had the shop manual, which was “multicultural” in that it also taught me some of that wonderful British car jargon.
That was similar to the problem I had. Old, corroded connections and wires. I drove it to work one day and came back out and it wouldn’t start. When I grabbed the battery cable grounded to the body, it came apart in my hand. Six dollars later , I was back on the road.
After a year of ownership, my 40-year-old MGB has been more reliable than my 20-year-old Camry. The only things that have stopped working on the MGB are the ignition switch and starter relay, both of which were easily replaced. In the last twelve months, my Toyota has required a new transmission and new clutch slave and master cylinders.
Oh I bet. Toyota’s “reputation of reliability” is more of a fabrication of the sales department than the engineering department.
Was your Toyota American-made? I don’t mean the workers so much as the parts suppliers, who can’t all be sold on The Toyota Way. Those domestic-content labels for me are a nice heads-up about Buying American.
FWIW, our ’94 Camry (made in Indiana) wasn’t as well-made as our ’86 (made in Japan).
Lucas ‘prince of darkness’….perhaps. My Lotus had starting issues recently. Lucas distributor? no, Lucas coil? no, Lucas electronic ignition? no……..German Bosch spark plugs- yep, they were the source of the trouble.
Hi,
Looking at the interior shots, the dash appears to use the instrument cluster (no doubt Lucas equipment!) from the TR7
Can anyone confirm this, as I’ve never seen this in the UK or reference to it other websites or literature
I bought this car from the storage yard for $250. Body rust is only surface. put a battery in it, sprayed the carb, and is sparked right up. The boot was filled with tune up parts. Have switched to dual carbs , chrome bumpers, and saab alloy shelby wheels, and with a respray and some seats it will look the business. In to it for less than $1500. Best part is it is rot free and has only 80k km on it