Built between 4.11.64 and 6.11.64, this early pull-handle beauty left the Abingdon factory in the same very rare shade of Iris Blue it wears today.
The vendor has owned the car since 1989. As an Abingdon resident, he was able to tap into the huge hinterland of unique expertise and experience that had inevitably built up in MG’s home town.
He entrusted the car’s restoration to marque specialists Abingdon Car Restorations, who commenced upon a full body restoration.
In the meantime, the vendor spent time expertly fettling the car’s mechanicals and restoring, refurbishing or replacing anything that required restoration, refurbishment or replacement, as appropriate and necessary, mostly using parts from Moss.
The engine was rebuilt and balanced in 1991 and optimally put back together by legendary MG engine whisperer Geoff Allen, a man who had spent 30 years working on them at the Abingdon factory.
When the vendor commissioned another full body restoration in 2010/11 (again with Abingdon Car Restorations), he decided to do little more to the engine than tune it up.
“When Geoff did an engine”, he said, “you knew it was done for life."
The car has an Oselli-modified gas-flowed unleaded head, Aldon electronic ignition, and a full stainless-steel Maniflow exhaust system with a four-branch ceramic-coated manifold by Zircotec.
It also has one key feature that it didn’t have when it left the factory – an overdrive gearbox.
The vendor located a three-synchro overdrive gearbox to the specification used by MG’s Competition Department, and incorporated a Brown and Gammons period gear knob with a cylindrical brushed-steel body incorporating an overdrive flick-switch on the side.
Another non-standard, but in-period, feature of the car is the smaller diameter Moto-Lita steering wheel.
The car had the doors replaced a decade ago.
Items fitted more recently include a sturdier anti-roll bar, Lucas hazard lights, new engine mounts (2023), a high-torque starter motor, new rear springs (2018), new Bosch battery (2018), new prop-shaft and clutch with roller- and thrust-bearings (2023), and new 165/80R14 Falken tyres (2018).
The original specification disc steel wheels are fitted with hubcaps.
So, you may well be asking, what does all this add up to in terms of the driving experience.
Put simply, this is one of the very best MGBs we’ve ever driven.
It starts on the button, hunkers down, grips the road with commendable tenacity, and sets off with more alacrity and aplomb than you have any right to expect of a 60-year-old car.
It is nothing short of a revelation and the memory of driving it will stay in our collective memory for quite some time.
In 2013 the Royal Mail used this very car - EBW 45B - for a commemorative stamp celebrating the British car industry.
It’s not hard to see why.