MG T-Bar Quiz

Which famous company was responsible for this conversion?

Name one other company that attempted conversions of this sort on the ADO16 range



Apologies for the delay setting a new question...

1. The car shown was built by Crayford. Crayford were best known for Ford Cortina and Capri convertibles and the Crayford Xterminator 3 litre Escort, but built both open topped and estate versions of the 1100.


2. Jensen. In 1967 Jensen built a prototype convertible based on an Austin 1100. Some sources say that 3 were built but there is only evidence available that one, the prototype was ever built.

From the AROnline website:

“An Austin 1100 Countryman (chassis number A/AW10/16279A) was purchased by Jensen in June 1967, modified to convertible form and finished in Alaskan Blue with Blue Grey trim. The car appeared on the Jensen stand at the 1967 London Motor Show (registered LEA 765E), and was sold off the stand to Jensen dealership AC Bulpin & Co. of Newton Abbott for £725. It was subsequently taxed for road use and sold on to a customer. It is not known whether this car has survived.”

So, why use an estate model as the base car? Well, the main reason would have been that at the time, this was the only readily available 1100 model with a 2-door bodyshell, as the Mk1 saloons were only sold in 4-door form in the UK. The extra boot space afforded by the near-vertical tailgate would also have come in useful, bearing in mind the space that would have been occupied by the folding mechanism and the hood itself when folded. In fact, it’s quite likely that this car would have had an electro-hydraulically-operated hood, as a one-off Austin A40 Farina convertible converted by Jensen in the early 1960s was thus equipped.

Excellent, that went quicker than I thought!

Sorry for delay in setting new question. Sleep and work got in the way. Here at last is the new question

Which famous pre war MG racer was sentenced to four months imprisonment and why?

Thanks for that question Alan, quite a tragic story behind one half of the pair in the MG which crashed that fateful day in late May 1934 on the Isle of Man.





The MG race driver to receive the four month prison sentence was Kaye Don. He was released after serving two and a half months of his sentence from Douglas Prison, Isle of Man. Don was granted, on medical grounds, a remission of the sentence of four months imprisonment passed on him in July for reckless driving and the manslaughter of his mechanic in a car smash while practising for the Mannin races.

The night before an Isle of Man race the world beating racing driver Kaye Don wanted to test out some improvements to his MG. He took along his friend, and MG mechanic, Frankie Tayler. They drove at night without lights, and cornering at 60 MPH hit another car. The MG overturned. Frankie died as a result of injuries received.

For Kaye Don this signalled the end of his career as a racing driver.

Frankie Tayler's headstone is embellished with an image of the car in which he lost his life.



Frankie had only been married for ten months and he was buried in St Sepulchre’s Cemetery, Jericho, Oxford.

His new bride visited the grave of her husband for the next 66 years until she died in 2000.

For more information see here for details of Kaye Don's career and here for details of Frankie Tayler's wife's story

Quite right. As usual you've supplied more information than I had.

Name the car shown and the MG link

The car is the one described below a 14hp Singer T-head with Hispano Suiza body. The owner/MG link was Cecil Kimber

"In September 1915 he married Irene (Rene) Hunt, and carried her off in another Singer - this time a modified T-head 14hp raced by a previous owner at Brooklands, and now fitted with a stark, open body from a Hispano-Suiza (and, of course, registered NI 91.) With the headlamps removed, their two horseshoe mountings were ideal for a wedding car, but otherwise it was totally unsuitable for a touring honeymoon".

Description is from http://www.asco.org.uk/page304.html

Well done Alan.



This is indeed one of the Singer cars owned by Cecil Kimber and the second to use the Northern Ireland registration NI 91. The Edwardian police were quite keen on fining speeding motorists and some unfortunate motorist with the registration N 191 probably received quite a few tickets meant for someone else

As shown in the link you provided, Cecil Kimber was still using a Singer car as late as 1936.

Next question

Which fictional detective uses an MG TA.?

That would be Eric Stride.

Thomas Rendell Curran was born in St. John’s, Newfoundland in 1939 and now lives in Ottawa, Ontario.



Curran gave his fictional detective a MG TA because he liked the looks of the car. The inspiration for a distinctive car was taken from Colin Dexter’s Inspector Morse.



For the full details click here to view the author's site.



Whilst you ponder your question for the MG Quiz David and having seen your interest in destinations, how about working out these destinations;

On Feb 4, 1945 Cecil Kimber boarded a train at King's Cross station, London. Kimber was then killed in a freak railway accident when the wheels of the train on which he was travelling kept slipping on a newly replaced section of rail forcing the driver to pull to a stop in a tunnel. Unable to see in the darkness, the driver was unaware that the train had in fact started to slip back down the hill. A signalman, attempting to avert a collision with another train, decided to switch the points - however the train was already too far back down the track. With the front and rear of the final carriage effectively running on different parallel lines there was nothing that anyone could do to prevent a collision with a metal signal gantry which proceeded to slice the overturned coach in two. Kimber was one of only two fatalities.


Could you tell us the destination Kimber was going to that fateful day and his final last known destination?

Would be good if you could explain how this fits in to the answer too...