Background
King Charles drove his MGC GT for more than 30 years before passing it along the succession line to Prince William. You can tell that to anyone who tries to tell you the car wasn’t successful (there were internal political reasons for BMC dropping the model after only two years). Compared with its four-cylinder brother the MGB, the C is a rare beast. Back in the day that may have been bad for BMC, but it’s fantastic news for classic car collectors and enthusiasts today.
The MGC’s story actually starts with rival marque Austin Healey, and their universally loved 3000. Donald Healey was looking to build a successor to the car, and with both eyes tightly focussed on the lucrative American market, wanted to take the car up market. The 3000 used a BMC straight six 3-litre engine, and Donald Healey intended to improve upon this by using a Rolls Royce 4-litre six to upgrade the car.
This worked for BMC because they’d committed to buying significant quantities of that 4-litre Rolls-Royce engine for their Vanden Plas Princess 4-Litre R luxury saloon, sales of which had been disappointing, so the firm was looking for a vehicle to put the surplus engines into. The luxury Austin-Healey 4000 was created to be that vehicle.
Three prototype Austin Healey 4000s were built with widened chassis to accept the new power plant, before newly announced American safety legislation made it clear the old 3000’s construction, with a separate chassis, wasn’t going to get US type approval, and the project was shelved. However, the MGB had a much more modern monocoque shell, so attention turned to Abingdon for a solution.
The 4-litre Rolls Royce engine was too big for the MG, so BMC decided on a 3-litre six instead. Getting ones head around the internal politics of the British Motor Corporation during this period is similar to untying a Gordian knot whilst blindfolded and solving a Rubik’s Cube with ones feet, but the bottom line is that instead of using the existing Austin Healey 3000 engine, the company instead chose a six-pot designed by its Australian division.
However, the 2.4-litre Blue Streak engine needed significant redevelopment before it would produce enough reliable power to be a serious upgrade for the MGB, and the resultant 2.9-litre engine required major surgery to the MGB’s shell to make it fit.
The MGB’s coil sprung front suspension had to make room for the big six and was junked in favour of Jag E-Type-esque torsion bars, which allowed the suspension forces to be fed into the floorpan under the front seats, thus making room at the front of the car. At the rear the leaf springs remained, but a tough Salisbury rear axle took on the role of getting the C’s 170lb-ft of torque on to the tarmac.
Having gone round in circles with their design process, BMC then managed to cock-up the car’s press debut by presenting it to motoring journalists with only 24psi in the front tyres, thus giving the firm impression of a car that understeered badly compared with the lithe and turn-in happy B.
All this, plus yet more internal BMC politics in the form of pressure from its own Triumph division, who didn’t want a six cylinder sports car threatening sales of their TR6, meant that that the C was axed after just two years, with only 9000 being made.
