CarBrandLogos archive · MG · 1936

MGMG T-type

The car that taught America what a sports car was.

Photo: Rudolf Stricker · CC BY-SA 3.0

The story

A defining chapter in MG history.

Explore the ideas, engineering and context that shaped the MG T-type, then continue into its specifications and place in the marque's lineage.

Origins

Under this badge sit five related cars, the TA, TB, TC, TD and TF, built at Abingdon from 1936 to 1955 and sharing a formula that was old-fashioned even when new: a separate chassis, a folding windscreen, cutaway doors, wire wheels and a pushrod four driving the rear wheels through a four-speed gearbox.

MG-interior · Liftarn · Public domain

Design and engineering

The one that mattered most was the TC of 1945. It was among the first cars Britain could export after the war, and American servicemen who had driven them in England began bringing them home. Nothing in a US showroom felt remotely like it. The TC and the TD that followed created the American sports car market more or less from scratch, seeded the club racing scene, and gave a generation of young Californians, several of whom went on to build their own cars, their first sense of what a light and tossable machine could do.

MG MG T-type · Thesupermat · CC BY-SA 3.0

In production

MG modernised in stages rather than leaps. The TD gained independent front suspension, rack and pinion steering and, controversially, disc wheels in place of wires. The TF of 1953 got a sloping radiator and faired-in headlamps that fooled nobody, because by then customers wanted full-width bodywork and MG had none. That is exactly why the MGA which replaced it in 1955 looked like a product of a different century.

1939 MG TB - Flickr - 111 Emergency · 111 Emergency from New Zealand · CC BY 2.0

Legacy

T-types have been collected, raced and rebuilt continuously ever since, and they remain the cars most people picture when they hear the words British sports car.

At a glance