The MGA was the car which took MG from its upright prewar designs to a swoopy new ’50s style and quickly became its best-selling product.    

Words: Paul Wager

If it had a Ferrari badge on the front you wouldn’t dismiss it,” someone said to me recently while discussing the MGA and it’s something which has stuck in my mind ever since. The lithe shape is in its own delicate way just as iconic as the E-Type and while the MGB may have been rather old-fashioned even at launch, the MGA represented something of a high point for MG and was a state-of-the-art sports car.

It so nearly didn’t happen though. Early prototypes for the car were shown to BMC boss Leonard Lord in 1952 but instead of the expected green light for production the proposed new MG was put on the back burner in favour of the new sports car collaboration with Donald Healey which was to become the Austin-Healey 100.

This left MG to soldier on with what by then was really a very outdated product range. Triumph was turning out the TR3 and the European makers were producing modern-looking sports cars too, but MG was still relying on the TF which looked closer to a prewar design than a sports offering for the ’50s.