MGA Sports - for hire |
In the Driving Seat - of Reflections classic MGA for hire in Yorkshire The engine fires readily when the starter button is pulled and warms up quite quickly. Driving this MGA MK II you are made aware of its ancestry by its style and its feel, but its competent road holding and responsive handling are impressive even 50 years after it was built. The design of the car features a separate chassis and there is no detectable flexing, so the MGA feels to be tight and very solidly built. The way the car behaves on the road is distinctly MG as it combines a firm ride with safe predictable handling. Steering is high geared and responsive and the engine is very flexible, pulling quite strongly from low speeds It is a delight to drive. The cockpit is comfortable and although storage is limited there is some space on the shelf behind the seats when the hood is raised. Each door has a generous storage pocket for smaller items. There is a small boot and squashy bags are recommended for luggage. There is also a luggage rack fitted to our car. The hood has a fully folding frame and the folded hood assembly can be retracted into the compartment behind the seats. The side-screens are located by a peg at the rear and a cranked bracket at the front which is fixed to the door by a knurled nut The side-screens on the MK II are well designed with sliding perspex windows that provide quite good visibility. There is a full tonneau cover. Our MGA roadster for hire is a MKII version, which was the most developed of the series and was built in 1961. It was completely restored in 2001/2 and is converted to run on unleaded petrol. It also has a 5 speed gearbox that provides better ratio's and syncromesh on first gear. MGA History When the MGA arrived in 1955, it came as quite a shock in comparison to the pre-war 1930's look of the company's previous sports cars. The MGA was a new beginning with a beautiful streamlined body and it was powered by the much more modern B-series engine that had made its debut in the recently announced Magnette saloons. Before the official launch of the MGA in 1955, three aluminium bodied prototypes of the new sports car ( coded EX182 ) were entered into Le Mans where they performed well, finishing fifth and sixth in their class. Thus, when the MGA was finally announced the car already had a competition background as testimony to its pedigree. Between 1955 and 1962 MG sold over 100,000 MGA's with over 80,000 of these being exported to America. Like other sports cars of this era, such as the E-Type Jaguar, the MGA's design was a significant styling break from other vehicles that were still very much of the bygone war years, the MG T Series cars for instance. The MGA sports car was brought to the public eye at its launch at the Frankfurst Motor Show, Internationale Automobil-Ausstellung (IAA) of 1955. The design of the MGA evolved from George Philips' car in the 1952 Le Man, 24 hour race- the MG TD, which had some forward thinking mechanical gadgetry but was not aerodynamic in any way and still looked like a 1930's car. Sales were beginning to fall for MG cars, possibly because they looked out of date, which caused the BMC Chairman, Leonard Lord, to backtrack on an earlier decisions where he rejected a new design put forward to him as the UA-series. The newly named MG'A', to mark the start of a new series of cars, was born through a time of flagging sales and a want for something new, which is exactly what everyone got - a new sleeker design was aided by a new lower profile engine. So, through the MGA classic sports car that we now hire in Yorkshire, the MG cars no longer looked like they were built in a museum from the previous decade and their new look and engine brought the modern sports car speeding along the final straight of the 1950s and roaring into the 60s! For the MKII, the engine was increased in size from 1588 to 1622 cc. This extra volume along with various other engine changes gave an improvement in maximum power output, up from 83 bhp. to over 90 bhp. Sure footed handling and very good progressive braking makes the MK II a very safe and predictable car to drive. The disc front and drum rear set-up behaves impeccably and was well regarded when the car was new. |
