MG TD Replica
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The MG car company – the letters “MG” stood for Morris Garages – produced sports cars and saloon cars in England from the 1920’s onwards. Their sports cars were affordable and had great style and nowadays if any car is to evoke the spirit of the classic British sports car in people’s minds it is the MG “T” series which arguably has to take that honour.
The MG Car Company produced the “T” series from 1936 up until 1955. The “TA” and “TB” models were produced from 1936 to 1939. After the War came the “TC” model and then in 1949 the “TD” was produced, which still had the classic 1930’s styling but with far better road holding and an engine (the XPAG series) which could be hugely tuned to produce very reasonable performance.
The MG “TD” was the largest production run the MG Car Company had ever produced up to that point by a very large margin, with approximately 30,000 of these cars made. Interestingly most of this production (about 23,000) were produced in LHD version and were exported to the USA. The final model in the “T” Series was the MG “TF” – it still retained 1930’s styling and was produced from 1953 to 1955 with about 9,000 made.
By modern day standards the MG “TD” did not have stunning performance unless it was tuned (I can vouch for this having owned one, registration “ GVA 707” – if the current owner reads this please let me know!). The engine capacity was 1250cc which originally developed 54bhp but with the Mk2 version from 1950 onwards it produced 57bhp and gave a top speed of about 80mph (with a good following wind!). Its 0-60mph time was 23 seconds approximately (although 0-50 mph was about 15 seconds) – once again this was the untuned performance.
The “MG TD” replica you will drive is the “TD 2000”. These “TD 2000” cars are currently produced at a factory in Malaysia. From a looks point of view they are hard to distinguish from the original with just a casual glance. However the instrumentation has a slightly different layout and the seats are individual bucket seats compared to the original which had individual squabs but with a backrest which went right across both seats.
The engine is very different too in the TD 2000 – it uses a 2 litre Toyota engine which develops 130bhp and its resulting performance is more than useful! Brakes are disc front and rear. Gear box is a Toyota 5 speed manual and the engine is fuel injected.
You will really enjoy the drive in the “TD 2000”, which attracts a lot of attention wherever it goes! Drive it and get that superb classic car experience.
