In October 1965, MG unveiled a handsome fixed-head coupe version of the popular MGB sports car. Car and Driver sampled the new MGB GT in May 1966 and thought the quieter, more refined coupe would be a big hit with American buyers. They were wrong.
One of the many now-quaint debates that sometimes raged in the car magazines of the ’50s and ’60s was the future of the traditional sports car. For purists, this meant a relatively compact, lightweight roadster with an absolute minimum of frills. True sports car lovers mostly considered wind-up windows an unjustifiable extravagance, and some even regarded the windshield with suspicion — all that heavy glass and extra frontal area!
Today, it all seems exceedingly silly (especially now that many automakers won’t even sell you a two-door coupe for less than $50,000, much less a roadster), but it was a burning question for many readers of magazines like Road & Track and Sports Cars Illustrated, predecessor of Car and Driver.
Nonetheless, by 1966, the editors of C/D felt the writing was definitely on the wall:
No matter what the purists tell you, the sports car as we know and love it is up to its axles in the automotive tar pit, and there ain’t no way anybody is going to yank it free. This is a simple case of natural selection, because an ever-increasing majority of enthusiasts are looking for more refinement in their automobiles, and the spartan old sports car, designed not really for fast transport but to make some sort of ringing statement about the endurance and resolve of its driver, is gone forever.
One of the last major manufacturers of sporting vehicles to service the masochistic needs of pure sports car owners was the British Motor Corporation, which persisted in building the Stone Age MGA until it became some sort of four-wheel fossil. Happily, the British Motor Corporation has seen the light in recent years, and it is now marketing several sports cars that go, stop and negotiate corners without lashing the passengers with wind, rain and flying rocks in the process.
With that in mind, Car and Driver described the new MGB GT as “an absolute delight,” remarking, “For the first time, an MG sportster is being imported to these shores that really seems to be at home on our highways.”
In roadster form, C/D noted that neither the MGB nor the earlier MGA had been much fun for interstate travel, with their high noise and iffy interior comfort wearing thin after “an afternoon of rallying or acting out low-key racing fantasies on winding country roads.” The MGB GT was still best suited for mild climates, since it retained the tourer’s “typically weak-hearted English heater” and had no air conditioning, but it was much quieter inside at speed than the open tourer. Extra insulation also reduced the heat radiating from the transmission tunnel.
The MGB GT had a rear hatch rather than a conventional decklid, and it included a rear seat of sorts:
However, even calling it a 2+2 was being unreasonably generous, in C/D‘s view:
The seating, coupled with the interior silence, makes the GT a really neat touring car for two, but don’t kid yourself about the “occasional” rear seat. We have seen a lot of so-called rear seats stuck in the back of GT and sports cars, but the one in the MG sets a new record for silliness. It does provide enough headroom for a small child, but it’s like they designed the seat itself exclusively for double amputees. Foot room does not exist, and any unwitting passenger will have to be content to travel in a loose prenatal huddle. To make matters worse, the seat back is raked slightly forward as a final warning to anyone seriously contemplating climbing back there. Happily the seat back does fold down, providing a fully usable 10 square feet of luggage space that is accessible through a generously-sized, swing-up rear door. Provided this rear space is restricted to cartons and luggage, it is perfect; but stay out of there at all costs!
Rear seat room notwithstanding, the MGB GT was (and remains) a very attractive little car. Styled by Pininfarina, the GT was a good deal more graceful than the old MGA coupe despite its brazen defiance of Harley Earl’s first commandment: It was taller than the roadster, with a 4-inch higher windshield that made the fixed roof look like it belonged there rather than being an awkward afterthought. (Incidentally, MG body engineer Jim Stimson maintained that the idea of raising the windshield actually came from John Thornley and Syd Enever, not Pininfarina, but whoever’s idea it was, it worked well both practically and aesthetically.)
Car and Driver gushed:
The crisp coupe treatment on the GT is a pleasure to behold from the inside and out. Several previous attempts from the British Isles to fit hardtops to roadsters—including the old MGA coupe—were something wide of the mark in a styling sense, but the MGB GT has the kind of tough, squared-off looks that should endear it to everyone. Contrary to the old “A” coupe, which had a wraparound roof that created the impression that you were riding in a diving helmet, the GT has vast areas of glass. This is not only excellent in terms of esthetic appeal, but it offers outstanding visibility from all angles.
For comparison, here’s the old MGA coupe:
Not only was the MGB GT better looking, the GT was also more aerodynamic than the open MGB, which was good for a few extra mph on top despite an unchanged engine, and provided much better resistance to crosswinds.
The editors said the rest of the car was identical to the MGB tourer they tested in December 1964, which wasn’t quite correct: In addition to an engine with five main bearings rather than three, the MGB now had a revised Salisbury rear axle with a steel rather than aluminum nosepiece, which contributed to reduced driveline noise. The GT also had stiffer rear springs and a standard front anti-roll bar, compensating for the added weight over the rear wheels and probably contributing to the reduced crosswind sensitivity.
C/D said:
The handling remains acceptable for a vehicle with leaf springs and a solid rear axle, and the added stiffness of the coupe structure may have improved the roadability over the conventional “B” roadster. We did not have a roadster on hand during our test, and therefore our observations are entirely subjective—but several of the staff noted an improvement over the regular MGB. This may be true, but it may just be the result of the overall enthusiasm the car generated among us. Either way, the MGB GT corners with a minimum of fuss, especially considering its uninspired rear axle location.
The great virtue of the MGB was not that it had exceptional cornering power in any absolute sense (it had modest 5.60-14 tires and a rather primitive suspension), but that it was responsive and pointable, thanks in large part to rack-and-pinion steering that required only 2.9 turns lock-to-lock.
Car and Driver offered little comment on the disc/drum brakes, but Road & Track found that while they provided good initial deceleration rates (26 feet/sec./sec.), they faded surprisingly easily and were slow to recover. The extra weight of the GT body (around 160 lb heavier than the tourer) probably didn’t help here.
The added weight also cut into acceleration a bit, although C/D didn’t seem to notice:
The entire drive train is unchanged, including the venerable MG four-cylinder engine, now featuring five main bearings and 1800cc. This means 98 reliable old horses are being produced, which are sufficient to run the car to 60 mph in 12.1 seconds, and to provide it with a top speed slightly in excess of 100 mph. Better yet, the car will cruise—with its 3.90 final drive ratio—at 70-80 mph without wear and tear on either the mechanism or the passengers.
This was still the era where Car and Driver performance figures had to be taken with a grain of salt, but contemporary road tests of the MGB GT got surprisingly variable results. Autocar and Road & Track both needed 13.5 seconds or more to reach 60 mph, a second or so slower than the roadster, but with more break-in miles, the Motor long-term “staff car” recorded 0 to 60 in 12.2 seconds and a top speed of 108.2 mph, which was very close to the C/D figures.
C/D didn’t have or seem to miss the optional Laycock de Normanville overdrive, a $185 option that Road & Track considered “almost essential, and certainly desirable.” Overdrive cut engine speeds in top gear cruising by 20 percent, which not only provided quieter cruising, but also pushed the annoying boomy resonance the MGB GT still suffered at about 4,000 rpm out of the legal freeway speed range. The reduced fuel consumption also helped to eke more mileage out of the 12-gallon fuel tank. (Car and Driver estimated that the GT was good for up to 28 mpg on premium, which was optimistic — Motor found it hard to achieve much better than 21.7 miles per U.S. gallon (26 miles per Imperial gallon) even on the expressway.)
Even without overdrive, the reduced noise level seemed to put the C/D editors in a more tolerant mood when it came to other lingering MGB shortcomings:
We still have that aged MG gearbox, complete with a non-synchro first gear, and a wide ratio spread between second and third gears. It’s still very difficult to engage first gear at a standstill, but the aforementioned interior insulation reduces the heat and noise to a point where the gearbox isn’t anywhere near the irritant it used to be.
Our test car had its rear-view mirror hung out on the left-front fender, where it was constantly being knocked out of adjustment, and the bumpers are a bit dainty for American parking tactics, but otherwise the GT’s exterior fittings are entirely acceptable.
An all-synchro gearbox would arrive for 1968, with somewhat better ratios, but still with an annoying gap between 2nd and 3rd. As for the dainty bumpers, in retrospect, perhaps the editors should have been careful what they wished for …
C/D concluded:
With an East Coast list price of $3,095 [$360 to $400 more than a tourer], the MGB GT should be a roaring success on the American market. If it isn’t, it may mean that old Charles Darwin was wrong after all.
Car and Driver was wrong here: The MGB GT did okay in the States, but it was NOT a “roaring success on the American market.” In the late ’60s, the GT accounted for only about one-third of North American MGB production (albeit never more than 8,000 cars a year), and sales dropped off even further in the ’70s. The GT was finally withdrawn from the U.S. market after 1974 to avoid cannibalizing the new Triumph TR7. (The MGB GT remained in production for other markets through the 1981 model year — the silver LE pictured above was one of the last of the line.)
In all, production of the left-hand-drive North American MGB GT totaled 47,188 cars through 1974, whereas production of the North American MGB tourer during the same period totaled more than 141,000 cars. Despite its attractive looks and greater practicality, the MGB GT just wasn’t what many American buyers in this segment were looking for.
Paradoxically, the MGB tourer and its ilk became popular in the U.S. precisely BECAUSE they “never radiated a strong sense of belonging on the American scene,” to use C/D‘s phrase. American buyers who wanted a sporty coupe with a fixed roof that was quiet on the highway had lots of other options, both import and domestic, some of which were much faster and had more effective heating and ventilation.
By comparison, small roadsters have always been a rarer breed in the U.S., and their novelty was enough to keep some doddering British and Italian sports cars (including the late MGB!) selling here long after they had ceased to be competitive in any other sense. Later, the Mazda MX-5 Miata revived the concept with more modern engineering, and it’s still going today, years after most affordable sporty fixed-head coupes went extinct.
I doubt the hardcore sports car fans of the ’50s would take much comfort in that (“Power windows? AIR CONDITIONING? You might as well drive a Buick!”), but it just goes to show that sometimes, what seems like the most obvious, logical outcome isn’t how things turn out at all.
Related Reading
Curbside Classic: 1967 MGB – To B Or Not To B (by Paul N)
Vintage R&T Road Test: 1968 MGB – Fully Synchronized, At Last (by Paul N)
Auto-Biography: 1968 MGB GT – No Dream Car (by Paul N)
1972 MGB GT – Early Adopter (by Tom Klockau)
Never saw one of the GTs, my best friend’s dad had an awful MGB that I rode in several times. Not sure what year it was, but in 1970, in December, maybe December 7th, we went to see “Tora Tora Tora”, and his dad picked us up in the MGB. The fine Lucas Electric stuff started dying almost as soon as we left the theatre, in a snowstorm. Somehow, some way, we got to my house, where it died. My dad wanted to go to bed, but he ended up staying up until AAA showed up and ended up towing it to their house. It was almost 4am. The MGB wasn’t around much longer, it kind of killed off my friend’s dad’s British sports car desire. It was replaced by a Chevy Chevelle with a 307 in it.
What it needed arrived slightly later in the form of the Buick V8 shoehorned in that picked up the performance some, cant see whats meant to be wrong with the brakes, they are the same discs calipers and pads my Superminx has in fact I used MGB caliper kits to rebuild them they work just fine
I dealt with buying & selling many British cars from the 70s to early 2000s. Had 4 GTs and 9 Tourers, and personally much preferred the GT with it’s taller windshield a boon for taller folks and it’s tighter body and refinement were welcome, overdrive a must for other than back-road driving. The 5 bearing engine and all-syncho box were a significant improvement and appreciated. Simple to maintain and robust (while rust must be dealt with properly), it’s a car that can be driven 10/10ths at sane speeds and to this day I maintain no other car offered more fun for the dollar. With 500k made worldwide it’s still affordable.
I had one of these, a ’68 GT with the all-synchro transmission, and in that light yellow color. I bought it dirt cheap in LA because it had almost no compression in one cylinder. I was promoted to general manager of the tv station shortly afterwards so it just sat and sat until eventually I took the head off and got a valve job on it. I got it put back together and only drove it a few times as the whole purpose in fixing it was to sell it, as we had a kid on the way and too many cars. I enjoyed driving it, but it was a bit crude, obviously,
Yes, Americans were in love with open top roadsters and C&D got that part wrong.
That’s why the GT had finished round 1975 ,,? In the US. . They wherever popular in its home land with the car comics calling Poor man’s Aston Martin”.
I like the car and always have. My intro to British cars was in my senior year in high school where one classmate drove an MGA and another drove a 66 XKE, This being 1970. Later, in college, my dorm roommate got rid of his early 70’s Subaru for an MGB Roadster. Who needs heat when you live in San Diego in Pacific Beach which also means who needs A/C. Oh well another car I wanted in the mid-70’s along with a 66 Chevelle and 66-68 Mustang. At least I got the Mustang some years later.
I think I see more GT’s on the road now than roadsters. The latter were once very common but seem to have disappeared. Maybe only at car shows and meetups now. The most memorable GT sighting recently was on the Alaska Highway two summers ago, many miles from any city.
I saw the ads in Motor Trend and other car magazines and thought that the GT was quite attractive. I was also attracted to the Triumph Spitfire. I didn’t get a sports car until I got my ’77 Datsun 280Z. Now, that was a sports car that an American could love, and live with!
I once had more thoughts of getting a Spitfire, but my experience with Jaguars has cured me of any ideas of messing with British cars. Hence, my Mustangs.
Simple way of not having problems with an MGB is don’t modify it. IMHO
The MGB GT may have been competitive between 1965 and 1969, before the Datsun 240Z showed up in the same price range with 6 cylinders, overhead cam, and 4-wheel independent suspension.
I bought a 1969 bgt with custom leather seats for $900 it had 2 batteries and 2 carbs with. Brass luggage nuts. I had to use a duel calibration device with duel tube with floatation balls to synchronize the 2 carbs. I never had a transmission problem but the throw out bearing was made of graphite which I replaced a lot and the Lucas electric system sucked because it was opposite of us standard negative was positive and positive I was negative but all.in all just out of hs in 1974 it was a great ride and a chicken magnet
I sometimes miss my 1967 MGB GT MK I, when I rebuilt the engine I added he factory Laycock overdrive and this really did help .
-Nate
The MGB GT does rate an entire Richard Thompson song, written a few years after 1952 Vincent Black Lightning
It’s a great car song, but right at the end the lyrics suggest his car is a ragtop. Artistic license.
Oh I’ve got a little car and she might go far
She’s the mistress of my heart now
She’s a ’65 with an overdrive
And I cured her in every part now
Two in the front and two in the back
A hundred and ten on the old Hog’s Back
My MGB-GT she’s a runner now
MGB-GT
Oh my MGB-GT she’s a runner now
Oh I welded the sills and the old floor pan
Cut the rust with the torch and the hacksaw
Took the Rostyles off, put the spoke wheels on
Got a brand new Salisbury axle
When I come to town the girls all smile
They say, here’s a man with the retro-style
My MGB-GT she’s a runner now
MGB-GT
Oh my MGB-GT she’s a runner now
Lockheed discs and twin SUs
Original chrome on the grill now
Looks like a dream in racing green
Competition’s standing still now
I sprayed up her body, I strengthened her frame
I stripped her right down and built her up again
Now an Alpine’s fine if you’ve got the time
And a Healey’ll set you back some
And a TR4 costs a little bit more
But it don’t have the same attraction
Hard top handy in case of the weather
I don’t care if it rains forever
In my MGB-GT she’s a runner now
MGB-GT
In my MGB-GT she’s a runner now
MGB-GT
In my MGB-GT she’s a runner now
I remember when that road test came out. My Mom desperately wanted to replace her aging MG Magnette ZA with one, until she tried having both my sister and I (then 9 and 11) sit in the back seat at an auto show. She accepted the truth and ended up with a Volvo 122S wagon instead.
Ah, the beautiful MGB GT, my favourite car that I’ve never owned, never sat in, and never driven. I think they look just fabulous, like the quintessential 60s/70s English sports car, and a rare example of a hardtop looking better than the convertible version. They always make me smile when I see them – I think the rubber bumper models look great too, but am aware I may be alone in this… Plenty of GTs still around in New Zealand, including the fabulously-named MGB GT V8 that I don’t think the USA got. My husband loves them (he had a Midget some years ago), so there’s a slight chance one might appear in our garage at some stage. Mind you, they say you should never meet your heroes…
I’m curious about the raising of the front screen within MG. I thought I read sometime long ago that there was a misunderstanding (or perhaps skullduggery between factions?) that led to this end result. Whatever the truth, it’s the one considerable flaw in the design, to my eyes. It’s too tall for the car, not disastrously so (like the E-type 2+2), but enough that it’s not quite as it should be. A nice-looker, nonetheless, but 7/10.
Must admit that I could never see the point. The only reason for enduring the crudeness of the B was the open air, and the looks. These compromised both. I didn’t know the market agreed.
There have been a lot of conflicting accounts. At the time, John Thornley was happy to let Pininfarina take credit for the whole thing, for publicity. (There was precedent for that: Nash did the same thing in the ’50s, although they used very little of Farina’s work.) Jim Stimson, who was a body engineer in Abingdon, insisted that Enever and Thornley suggested the windshield change and that it was present in the body engineering plans created before Pininfarina was even hired. Thornley later seemed to have a hazy memory about the whole thing. There were other versions, like the idea that it was some kind of misunderstanding, but I don’t think there’s any truth to them.
The reason they raised the windshield was that with the shorter tourer windscreen, the proportions were always wrong, just like the MGA coupe, which no one in Abingdon thought looked good: Car and Driver‘s comparison to “riding in a diving helmet” was apt, and one of the politer ways of framing it so far as the designers were concerned. I suppose you could argue that the MGB GT didn’t look very sporting, more like some kind of MG1100/1300 coupe, but everyone at MG seems to have been agreed that it would have looked worse with the roadster windshield.
The MGB-GT had to have its windshield raised, as the soft top had a bulge to clear the driver’s head. Look at any of the removable hardtops; they look ridiculous with their raised roofs, essential for maintaining headroom.
I think the proportions are spot-on. It’s a GT, not a fixed head sports racer. Any lower would have reduced headroom to less than the roadster’s, with the top up.
I’ve long admired the MG B GT just in terms of styling and I’m one of the many who is puzzled by its comparative lack of sales success in the U.S. market, at least when it was first introduced in the mid-1960s. It did face initially face some sales competition from American pony cars, but by the early 1970s the Datsun 240-Z became “the” affordable sports car to have. It also faced a fair amount of sales competition from smaller pony cars like the Toyota Celica, the Capri, and the Opel 1900 Coupe/Manta.
With its extended roof-line (before it drops off) and with its hatchback I’ve seen several other articles where the writers consider the MG B GT to be more of a “shooting brake” (along the lines of the Volvo 1800 ES) than a true coupe.
The raised windshield doesn’t bother me and I think it actually looks a bit better than the lower windshield of the MG B convertible. In terms of styling, the MG B GT was certainly more successful than the Jaguar E-Type 2+2.
Beautiful cars. Emotionally I feel a clear connection between the MGB GT and the gen 1 Scirocco.
Grew up in the late 60’s and early 70’s when British Leyland cars were plentiful in LA. Next door was an MGB, across the street was a Triumph TR 6, my dad drove a Rover TC 2000 and I drove an Austin Healy Sprite. Really nice-looking cars. My opinion, the MG lost its looks in 1976 when US bumper mandates came into effect.
If it wasn’t for the always troublesome Lucas electrics………..
I have a Blaze Orange 1972 GT in NZ – the same year I married my wife. I love it to bits and don’t need to go fast to enjoy it. It’s a great conversation piece wherever we go. Definitely a full member of the family!