Amazingly MGB’s raced at the Le Mans 24 hour race for a while in the early 1960’s and actually managed to finish. Alan Hutcherson and Paddy Hopkirk (how is that for a real Irish name) drove the number 31 MG MGB to a class win in 1963 averaging 101 MPH, pretty impressive. Paddy Hopkirk and Andrew Hedges drove the MGB 2,392 miles at an average speed of 99.9 miles per hour in 1964. What a bummer not averaging 100 MPH, a few more laps would have done it. Anyway, pretty cool stuff.
If you go to any MG forum today most people are talking about how unreliable these cars are and they are spending crazy amounts of money making their beloved MG “better than new”. Maybe the original very stock cars aren’t that bad.
What’s I find very cool about these early Le Mans cars is the front grill area, very streamlined and in many ways a copy of the Ferrari racing cars of the era. Why didn’t they carry this beautifully streamlined look over to the production cars? My guess is that the covered headlights were not legal for the US market at the time and of course this is where the bulk of the MG MGB’s were sold. A real shame.
I keep on thinking that it would be fun to take my GT and transform it a little, make it more racy. We used to joke about putting a number on the car and taking it to the track, perhaps a frontal treatment like this could be fun. Crazy?
