“People think I’m nuts for not buying something faster, but there’s nothing that feels like this. It’s alive in a way modern stuff isn’t. You feel everything.”
This MG is not the roadster. Not the poster car. This one’s a hard top, less seen, more serious. There were four roadsters sold for every one hard top coupe. The It was originally built as MG’s answer to the aerodynamic revolution: postwar lines, streamlined panels, a move away from the upright, prewar shapes they’d been stuck in. Designed by Syd Enever, MG’s longtime engineer and stylist,it started as a sleek prototype built around a Le Mans car. The original concept had been so different from the existing MG lineup that they had to create a whole new chassis just to make it work. The coupe came later, a stiffer, more enclosed variant that never got the same love. But it had bones.
This one’s been stripped down, gutted, lightened to feel alive. Under the hood, the original B-series inline-four still lives, breathing through a pair of SU carbs with open velocity stacks. It’s not fast by any standards of modern times, but it’s responsive, honest, and mechanical. The bumpers are gone, sacrificed for weight savings and a cleaner look that pulls it even closer to its competition roots. One of his touches, a single driving light mounted in the front grille, is a nod to the rally cars of the 1960s.
In period, MGs were no strangers to motorsport. The MGA in particular found success in endurance events, Sebring, Le Mans, the Mille Miglia, often punching above its weight, proof that very often, weight is indeed king. The coupe's added rigidity made it a natural fit for long-distance rallies and road races, where durability mattered as much as outright speed.
The word alive keeps coming up, like a compass needle twitching north. You hear it when the owner talks about the MGA, but it leaks into everything else. His work, his designs, and his art. It’s not about polish. It’s about pulse, and you can see it in the brushstrokes.
“I want to feel like someone made it. I want to feel the fingerprints in it. It’s got to have noise. It’s got to be alive. Give me the shake. Give me the dust. I want to see that it’s barely in control. You can feel when it’s real. You know.”
He doesn’t want clean. He wants heart rate.
Car commercials? He doesn’t even try to hide his disgust. “I don't need another shot of a CUV on a mountain road with a golden retriever hanging out the back window. That's not driving. I don't want a perfect car. I want one that punches you in the chest.”
Because in that moment, it’s alive.
