Description
Compiled by R.M.Clarke, Softbound, 172 Pages, ISBN: 9781855203167, 1St Edition
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This latest Gold Portfolio comes as a companion volume to our MG TA & TC Gold Portfolio, which covers the story of the Midgets built between 1936 and 1949. Readers might also like to know that we publish an MG T-Series Restoration Guide, by Malcolm Green.
Our aim at Brooklands Books is to make available for motoring enthusiasts the literature about their hobby which would otherwise be hard to come by. In that endeavour, we are supported by the world's leading publishers of magazines, who generously allow us to reproduce material which is in their copyright. For this book, we are pleased to acknowledge the kind co-operation of the publishers of Auto, Autocar, Autosport, Car Life, Cars, Cars Illustrated, Enjoying MG, Light Car, Motor, Motor Trader, Motor Trend, Motoring Life, Popular Classics, Road & Track, Safety Fast, Special Interest Autos, Wheels and Your Classic.
R.M. Clarke
The T-Series Midgets were well established both at home in Britain and across the Atlantic in the USA by the time Abingdon came up with the TD in 1949. It both shocked and disappointed many traditional MG enthusiasts because it left behind many of the anachronistic features of its forebears, but it successfully recruited a whole army of new converts to the MG cause. In three years, Abingdon shipped nearly three times as many examples of the TD Midget as it had built of the car's TC predecessor in the same timespan.
However, the TF which succeeded the TD was nowhere near as successful. Even more modern styling (though still upright enough to recall the classic Midgets of the 1930s) should have endeared it to a new generation of buyers who had been too young to buy its ancestors. But sports car design had moved on. Abingdon hastily upgraded the car's performance by fitting a 1500cc engine in place of the original 1250cc type, but the TF did not last. Fewer that 10,000 examples were built in the two years and the new and radically different MGA arrived in 1955 to cater for a new breed of buyer.
Today, the TD and TF models have a strong following in the classic car scene, and the articles reproduced in this book will appeal to all those who have an interest in the last of the wings-and-running - boards MGs. They also constitute a fascinating fund of archive material which is simply not available anywhere else.
James Taylor
