Description

1926 MG 14/28 Super Sports - This is a faithful and desirable refurbishment of a 1926 MG ‘Super Sports’ and includes a rare and period LAP overhead valve cylinder head conversion. Built on an original 14/28 chassis - complete with its original registration number - carefully researched by the well-known motoring historian vendor over a period of 36 years from 1989 after the chassis was first discovered in a dilapidated condition in a woodyard near Mere in Wiltshire...see photos – This vehicle has also featured in The Automobile magazine for June 1018

FABULOUS - please enquire

A potted history of the model and detail about this car we are offering for sale:-

Among the many modifications required to transform an 14/28 Morris Oxford into an MG; the rake of the steering column was lowered and the steering box repositioned, moving it from its mounting on the side of the cylinder block to a bracket mounted to the chassis. A longer drop arm was fitted to improve the steering and a three spoke steering wheel replaced the Morris’s four spoke wheel. Seven leaf springs were flattened to lower the ride height and the brake rods re-rooted to pass beneath the rear axle which had a higher ratio crown wheel and pinion. Hartford friction dampers replaced the single action Gabriel snubbers. The battery & toolbox were relocated from the running boards to under the front seats. Modifications were made to the engine to obtain maximum RPM and the three speed gearbox was retained but the gear lever angle was altered for greater rake to suit the 14/28s sporting air and laid-back driving position.

The 1925 model 14/28 gained a larger radiator, four wheel rod operated 12 inch brakes and a 6 inch longer chassis. The upper part of its body was now painted steel, only the bottom half remained in polished aluminium alloy. Painting the car in two different colours above and below the waist line reduced its apparent height by several inches.
The radiator badge featured a Morris Oxford badge encircled by a Cambridge blue garter bearing the words ‘The MG Super Sports’.

In 1926 the 14/28 body became 2 inches wider and open hub wire wheels replaced the Ace disc covered artillery type. In May 1925 The Autocar tested MG‘s demonstrator tourer, describing it as “A sports model with unusually attractive lines and well balanced appearance”. The magazine’s verdict summarised that the car ‘had a higher turn of speed than most drivers would care to use and a very lively performance with little ostentation’. The Bullnose 14/28 MG stayed in production until late 1926, when the model followed its Morris sister and adopted a flat radiator. The company had now become ‘The MG Car Company (proprietors The Morris Garages Limited)’.

The bones of this 14/28 offered today were discovered languishing amongst the stinging nettles in a woodyard in Mere on the Wiltshire Somerset border. The chassis and drive train were neglected but complete, but any body work present was beyond saving. This car was purchased new from “Skurrays of Swindon” in 1926 by Mr Humphrey Cotterell. He was a horse breeder and jockey, and purchased the car with his winnings from a race at Ascot. Cotterell used the car extensively until 1930, after which as was often the case in the 1930s, it frequently changed hands. Its original registration & logbook reveals that the vehicle moved to Great Blakenham in Suffolk on 6th October 1930, where it stayed until 28th April 1933, before moving to London W9. It then changed hands again on 19th July 1933, moving to Brighton, where the last entry was a change of address in Brighton on 10th April 1934.

The car offered today has an in-period LAP overhead valve conversion fitted, available at the time for anyone seeking bottom end torque, as opposed to speed. Indeed, there is hardly a hill that it is not possible to climb in top gear. Lago Automotive Products were based in London NW1, the company started by Anthony Lago. In The Autocar of 3 September 1926 a full page LAP advertisement targeted Morris and MG 14/28 owners – claiming: enormously improved acceleration, great speed on hills, more hill climbing in top gear, far less gear changing, cooler running, higher speed and reduced petrol consumption owing to better shaped combustion space afforded by overhead valves. The price? Yours, sir, for a mere £24, the price of a small motorcycle in 1926.

In 1989 it would have been so easy to fit a ‘boy racer special’ body. Instead, detailed drawings were created so that the four-seat coachwork and firewall could be fabricated to the exact specifications of an original body. The body was created in ash and the panel work fabricated by Pitney in Wokingham. In consequence, today the coachwork is tight, the doors shut well and the hood frame fits exactly as it should. The three-piece windscreen has been made to exact specifications using some original components. The lower side panels should, in keeping with 1926 MG practice, have been polished aluminium, but the thought of continually polishing aluminium was not welcome. So the sides are finished in Lotus silver, which compliments the British Standard Oxford Blue top panels very well. The car returned to the road in 1995 and has been extensively campaigned to include trips to France and Germany.

The 14/28 ‘Super Sport’ was not a cheap MG and Cecil Kimber got away with charging a significant amount of money over the standard Oxford price. There are not many survivors and certainly today the 14/28 ‘Super Sport’ certainly represents the earliest MG and the first to taste sporting success.

HISTORY NOTES TO THE VERY FIRST MG

Arguably, the world’s most famous sports car, the MG has shadowy beginnings and historians have difficulty in establishing which car was in fact the first MG. One certainty is that without the imagination and drive of Cecil Kimber, the MG would never have come into being. Kimber joined Morris Garages - the group of retail outlets owned by William Morris - as sales manager in 1921, becoming General Manager a year later. He quickly began to design special body work for the Morris Cowley. This was the Chummy, a two-seater with space in the back for two additional passengers, with a hood covering all four seats, unlike the usual Dickey seat arrangement where the rear passengers sat unprotected. The rear of the car was lowered by the simple expedient of mounting the auxiliary quarter elliptic springs above the frame instead of below it. Kimber ordered the bodies from Carbodies of Coventry, where they were mounted on Cowley chassis, and finished off in one of the Morris Garages, in Longwall Street, Oxford. They were sold under the name of Morris Garages Chummy, and cost about the same as a standard Cowley four seater tourer. In February 1923 assembly was moved to a tiny workshop measuring 19‘ x 100‘ in Alfred Lane Oxford. With only three men working for him, Kimber managed to produce as many as 20 Chummys per week. With a mildly tuned model, he won a gold medal in the MCC 1923 Lands End trial, and this must’ve encouraged him to build a more sporting version of the Cowley. This had a two seater body by Raworth of Oxford, with raked windscreen. Six bodies were ordered, and the first car delivered in August 1923. At £350 it was very expensive compared with £198 for the Morris two-seater Cowley, and it was a year before the six cars were sold.

Kimber’s next car was a Chummy body on the Morris Oxford chassis followed by a saloon on the 14/28 Oxford chassis. This was advertised in the first issue of ‘The Morris Owner’ magazine in March 1924 as the MG V-front saloon. This was the first use of the MG name, and two months later the Raworth bodied Cowley was advertised as the “MG Super Sports Morris”. During 1924 Kimber built at least two special cars to individual order. One had a polished aluminium four-seater body by Carbodies, with discs covering the ugly artillery wheels. Built for trials driver Billy Cooper on the 14/28 Oxford chassis, it attracted a lot of attention at Brooklands and elsewhere, leading to request for replicas. At least 13 had been made by October 1924, when a longer wheelbase Oxford enabled better looking cars to be made. Kimber’s advertising referred to them as MGs though the Press tempted to call them Special Bodied Morrises, a practice that continued for some time.

The 14/28 tourer can be regarded as the first production MG. In 1925 Kimber issued his first catalogue in which the car was called the MG Super Sports, with no more mention of Morris. Modifications to the chassis which had been introduced in 1924, included a steeply raked steering column, flattened springs, more direct steering, handbrake moved from centre to right, and a higher final drive ratio. Clearly, the MG was no longer a Special bodied Morris, though it’s ancestry was still proclaimed by the Bullnose radiator. This did not yet carry the MG octagon badge, though octagons were used on the door plates mounted on the running boards. Three body styles were offered, the four seater at £375, a two seater at £350, and the Salonette, a two door saloon with a 2+2 seating and a little ducks tail for luggage at £475.

In the 12 months following the announcement of the new cars, 135 were built, 93 four seaters, 36 two seaters, and six Salonettes. The little workshop in Alfred Lane also built 25 closed bodies on unmodified Morris chassis. It is worth mentioning that the stock two seater, registered FC7900, which still exists and has featured so often in advertising as the first MG, or ‘Old Number One’, was by no means the first and it was not a standard model. It was not even built at Alfred Lane, being assembled at Longwall Street and powered by an OHV Hotchkiss engine. Kimber took a gold medal with it in the MCC 1925 Lands End Trial, and sold it shortly afterwards. Conditions in Alfred Lane were very cramped, and in September 1925 Kimber persuaded William Morris to let him have part of the Morris Motors radiator factory. Staff now numbered about 50, and a further move towards individuality was that Morris engines were now dismantled and carefully checked before being reassembled and installed in the chassis. In September 1926 Morris replaced the Bullnose radiator with a flat one, at the same time making the chassis wider and shorter. MG followed suit, the new car being available with the same bodies as the Bullnose, although there were two models of Salonette, the 2+2 with ducks tail luggage compartment, and a four seater with conventional D back saloon body. From late 1927 they were called 14/14, and carried an enamel MG radiator badge. The stock of 14/28 carried on over into the 1928 season and, sold as 14/40s, were re badged with octagons. Production was 235 cars in the 1927 season, and 399 in the 1928 season. in July 1927 Morris Garages was registered as a limited company, and two months later they moved into their first purpose-built factory, at Edmond Road, Cowley. Chassis now carried the MG car number as well as a Morris chassis number. Another landmark of 1927 was the first MG’s countless racing successes, when a 14/40 was driven to victory in a touring car race outside Buenos Aires. In October 1928 MG had their first stand at London’s Olympia Motor Show. Three models were exhibited, the familiar 14/40 and two completely new cars which marked a further step towards individuality. The little M type Midget became the more popular, but it was less innovative than the six cylinder 18/80, for most of its components came from William Morris’s new Minor.

With acknowledgement to the three volume Encyclopaedia of the Automobile Volume 2 by Nick Georgano
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Although we attempt to ensure accuracy of any statement or detail, the customer must make his or her own judgement in purchasing this car. The purchaser of the above car understands that he or she is purchasing a pre-war motor car with components that are up to 100 years old and sold as a collector item. There is no warranty given or implied due to the age of the car