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MG parts spares and accessories are available for MG T Series (TA, MG TB, MG TC, MG TD, MG TF), Magnette, MGA, Twin cam, MGB, MGBGT, MGC, MGC GT, MG Midget, Sprite and other MG models from British car spares company LBCarCo.

MG TD TF 1500 - Updates to TD and TF Sites

Well I have finally found the time to update all the saved files, pictures and other tidbits that I have collected or have been sent to me. You can see which pages have changed by looking at the date in the lower right corner of a webpage.

https://www.mg-cars.org.uk/mgtd/index.html
https://www.mg-cars.org.uk/mgtf/index.html

BTW I added a small feature to every page that helps you get back to the top for easier navigation, a red TOP icon.

If you feel you have sent me something that was supposed to be posted and cannot find it, send me a note and I will hunt it down.
Christopher Couper

Chris,

Not sure that you are aware of this, but the late Rev. Dr. Dick Knudson, and long- time chair of the NEMGTR, wrote his doctoral thesis whilst at Oxford and working at the MG works at the same time, and much of his thesis was based on MG. As such, he collected a lot of valuable material including the decision to cobble up the TF from the TD that essentially, fended off folding the Abington works whilst the MGA was in its genesis.

I don’t know who has his archives, but I’m sure there’s a lot of information in them that would be of benefit to your website. I also don’t know if access is being allowed to them as they are quite valuable to the MG community. You might start with David Sander, the present chair of the NEMGTR and who is frequently on this forum.

Your website is great and much appreciated, but I’m sure you would be happy to have more background on the T series MG.

Gord Clark
Rockburn, Qué.
Gord Clark

I think he gave a copy of the production records to Tom Lange, I would think NEMGTR would have a copy. I believe Tom with his sons help transferred this to a Spreadsheet so that he can look up a chassis number by engine number.

At the last KimberFest in 2019 Tom gave a presentation on these records. It was interesting to note that towards the end of TF production cars were produced in color/colour batches.

My TF9503 was sitting for quite a few days and then joined later numbered black cars. There were many days in February 1955 were there no cars produced in what I assume was a downturn in sales slowing production. E.g cars being produced on Tuesday through Thursday.

Of course more than 1 copy exists as you can look up chassis numbers online, and I think you can now get a chassis number from an engine number also.

Tom and I traded a number of emails referencing the production data for tranche of days either side of TF9503s production.

Peter
P G Gilvarry

There is one story unique to the TF that should be told. I don't have it but certainly Dick Knudson did. It goes something like this ...

Following the TD, sales to America started to trail off and the new model was needed. This happened at a time when MG was being sold to BMC whose Chairman Leonard Lord, was known as a real tightwad. He had agreed to a new streamlined model but there was nothing available to replace the TD until the new model became available.

Syd Enever who was running MG at the time decided on a facelift for the TD but Lord would not allocate any funds to development and the TF had to be produced under the budget of the TD. As I understand it the TF was cobbled up in two weeks.

The story is much more complicated than this and should be told while there are still people around who can get it straight. Dick Knudson was one of those. Are there others out there?

Gord Clark
Rockburn, Qué.
Gord Clark

You can get a lot of information from what Dick had in various publications as well as the NEMGTR journals etc. I can't publish any of that without violating copyright laws.

I suspect either the Knudson family or perhaps the NEMGTR or maybe a university has all of his papers and pictures. It is a treasure trove for sure.

If anyone does have a link to the ownership I am happy to enquire with the current owners.
Christopher Couper

The late David Shelburne talks about this in his video on the TF.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8HgVeKlmqY

Rick

This thread was discussed between 24/03/2022 and 30/03/2022

MG TD TF 1500 index

This thread is from the archive. The Live MG TD TF 1500 BBS is active now.