The Twentieth Anniversary of the MGB GT V8

It hardly seems possible that twenty years ago, the only V8 engined MGs were either a few American Ford V8-engined TD Midget “home brew” specials or Ken Costello’s exciting and well engineered (but expensive) Rover V8 engined MGBs. In early 1973, the best that British Leyland had to offer MG fans were a Midget and an MGB scarcely different from those which had issued forth from Abingdon for around a dozen years; furthermore, no-one seriously thought that either car would be destined to soldier on for another half dozen years!

The MGB had been mildly facelifted the previous autumn, redressing what most people at the time felt had ben the worst excesses the Leyland stylists, restoring the grille casing of the 1962-’68 MGB, but with an attractive black plastic cross-mesh insert instead of vertical metal bars.

By the summer of 1973, rumors were rife amongst those “in the know” that a rather special MGB was on its way, although British Leyland themselves were principally concerned with the launch of a new car to replace the similarly old but still popular BMC 1100 – well known in the US for the Austin America and MG Sport sedan variants. The good-looking 1100/1300 range had always sold well – it was for many years the best selling car in Britain – and so the car that was intended to replace it was obviously of prime importance to British Leyland. This important new car was the Austin Allegro – “The New Driving Force From Austin” – so the launch of the new high-performance MGB didn’t get quite the high degree of razzmatazz expected.

The day of the launch arrived – Wednesday August 15th – and the MGB GT V8 was featured in full page advertisements in the leading British newspapers, the wording of the advertisement clearly identifying the new cars’s intended competition as the Datsun 2 I0Z. Reliant Scimitar GTF. and Alfa Romeo 2000 GTV, but significantly omitting to mention Ford of Great Britain’s much cheaper Capri 3-litre – the closely related German version of which you will recall came to the USA as the Mercury Capri.

Reaction from the motoring press to the new MG was generally favourable – “Motor” managed to achieve a quite remarkable road test performance rumors which included a  0-60 m.p.h. time of 7.7 seconds; all  the more remarkable when you consider that the V8 engine had a diet of 3-star petrol due to its low compression ratio, which it consumed at an equally remarkably thrifty rate.

Nevertheless, some motoring pundits complained bitterly that the V8 was “too little, too late”, and the fact that the car used the basically unaltered chassis and main componentry from the eight year old MGB GT was cited as an example of typical Leyland penny-pinching with their best loved sports car marque; memories of the much maligned MGC were still strong, and many people had little patience with British Leyland or their cars.

The MGB GT V8 seemed to have a glowing career ahead of it, even though it was always likely to be destined to be kept in the shadow of the V8 engined Triumph sports cars – the TR8 and Lynx – which were waiting the the wings, but the Arab-Israeli War of 1973 suddenly put a different perspective on all large engined high performance cars: Petrol prices rose alarmingly, and preparations were in hand for petrol rationing should circumstances demand.

Suddenly, large-engined cars, which the British general public perceived as “gas guzzlers”, were out of fashion, and any of these which existed solely for the home market were bound to suffer accordingly.

Sales of the MGB GT V8 were quite buoyant for the first twelve months or so, but fell rapidly into decline in 1974 and never really recovered. There were additional internal political factors and looming massive overall losses at the troubled British Leyland Company which also didn’t help – the company would as a consequence be nationalized in 1975 – and the greater importance which was attached to the “rubber bumper” facelifts to the entire MG sports car range meant the MGB GT V8 survived largely because of enthusiastic MG management and a dedicated core of enthusiastic customers.

The last two MGB GT V8s were built in September 1976 – alter a production total of 2,591 cars – and these two cars were even fitted with the 1977 model year MGB interior trim in a forlorn hope that the only eight-cylinder factory MG could be kept in production: sadly, this was not to be. however, and the V8 quietly slipped from the new car price lists and into MG folklore.

Many questions mystified MG enthusiasts for many years – for example, why wasn’t an MGB V8 roadster built, and why didn’t British Leyland go ahead with their original plans to export the car? The principle reason was a shortage of engines from the Rover factory – never supplied at a rate of more than 48 per week – and also one of the reasons why a low compression, more or less “Range Rover” tune engine had been adopted. However, there were also more basic internal company politics at work which prevented the necessary increase in engined production or the allocation of the necessary development budget.

The latent unsatisfied demand for V8 roadsters and by overseas enthusiasts soon lead to a growing market for privately converted cars, with Ken Costello still doing business, mainly producing V8 roadsters, although the (act that BL cut off his engine supply did not help!

Nowadays, there are many homebuilt or professionally converted V8 engined MGBs, a large proportion of which are on the MG Car Club V8 Register’s books. Just as twenty years ago the rumor-mill was rumbling with stories of a new V8 engined MGB, there were stories last year about the reemergence of the MG marque with our favorite engine mounted up front again!

With the launch of the new RV8 (the first production examples of which are soon to reach their eager owners) we look forward to the regeneration of the MG sports car marque, with the V8 engine once again to the fore – let us hope that someone will be writing a similarly nostalgic look back in twenty years time to the launch of the “classic” RV8 and the “vintage” MGB GT V8!