A Car With Initials MG

MG Cars is a former British sports car manufacturer, which was founded in 1924, the creator of the MG brand.

A car with initials for its name? To a country accustomed to the sonorous ring of Deusenberg and Cadillac, the smooth flowing syllables of Chevrolet and Locomobile, and the hard, clean sound of Stutz and Ford, the lean initials MG, encased in their octagon, were quite strange. In 1912 William R. Morris (there's the M), a former bicycle maker, formed a company called Morris Motors Limited. A subsidiary corporation was named The Morris Garages (now you have the G) . But it was not until 1923 that the initials were placed on the radiator of a car.

Picture MG 550 2009

MG Cars is best known for its two-seat open sports cars, but MG also produced saloons and coupés. More recently, the MG marque has also been used on sportier versions of other models belonging to the parent company.

Picture MG XPower SV 2004

The first MG was built because of a need, a need that was sensed intuitively by Cecil Kimber, general manager of Morris Garages. He felt that the public wanted a small, but high-performance sporting machine that could be driven sedately on the roads during the week and raced on Sundays. But the most important point was that it be priced modestly. Not everyone could afford a Bentley or Mercedes, but a little MG would fit the pocketbook, perform as a commuting car, and with a quick change of sparkplugs make a hero of its owner on the weekend. This concept fits practically every production MG from the first midget to the modern streamlined MGA.