January 1974, Harvest Gold, and this is about the last of the chrome-bumper MG Midgets with the 1275. Round rear arches, round lamps, a proper grille — the shape people mean when they say Midget. Later that year the rubber bumpers and the Triumph 1500 arrived. This one missed that memo.
Abingdon built these as small, light, front-engine, rear-drive two-seaters: twin SUs, four speeds, discs at the front, a live axle at the back. About 65 horsepower and not much weight. The joy is in the size of the car, not the size of the number.
Richard bought this one on 3 October 2009 from Paul Depper, the MG specialist on the A5 at Cannock. Five keepers had it before him. It already had a five-speed gearbox. Since then the list is the sort that accumulates when a small car is actually used: brakes upgraded so they do not fade in the Alps, an electric fan, an oil cooler, the engine rebuilt close to the original 1,275 cc, a gearbox rebuild, two new clutch slave cylinders.
Wire wheels went on in 2012 and stayed until one came off in Italy, outside a vineyard, two days after the car had done his daughter’s wedding. The original Rostyles went back on.
In January 2017, a full respray — which, he says, needs doing again — and a new roof.
The type was born to play. Sprites and Midgets have been club-raced since the beginning, and the works cars went much further than that — class results at Sebring and the Nürburgring, even the Targa Florio. BMC ran early Midgets on the RAC and the Monte. The 1275 is the A-series cousin of the Mini Cooper S, which is why club racers wanted it, and the MG Car Club’s Midget & Sprite Challenge is still the only UK series just for these cars. This particular car has no public race record. It reads as a used and enjoyed roadster, not a circuit car.
That is not a polite way of saying it sits in a garage. In May 2010 Richard drove it to Italy, completely naive to the quirks of an old car, stopping in Reims for champagne, Vienne for Côte du Rhône, then Fréjus and around the Côte d’Azur via Monaco as they were setting up for the Grand Prix. Tuscany was fine until the fuel line split and dumped petrol on the brakes. A local mechanic in his seventies sorted it and would not take money. He said Richard would be back. He never needed to be, and the car has outlived the old boy.
Italy thirteen times. Northern Spain twice. Often with a 1971 Raleigh on the back. The Alps and the Dolomites by the Gotthard, the St Bernard, the Stelvio, the Furka, the Mont Cenis, and more besides. To Italy by Germany, Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg, Austria, Slovenia, Switzerland, France and Spain. Florence, Milan, Turin, Munich, Paris, Ljubljana, Bordeaux, Bilbao, Monte Carlo. A Midget on a hill road with the hood down is doing the job it was designed for.
Square Wheels Lodge No.9966 is a lodge of people who actually use cars. We gather around machines and the stories attached to them. Richard’s Harvest Gold chrome-bumper still earns its keep on the road — which is the point.