The MGA might have represented a brand-new start for the marque’s sporting line in 1955, but it still had roots back in the previous T-Types. We’ll take as our starting point for this brief summary the special body that Syd Enever at MG built to go on a TD that George Phillips raced at Le Mans in 1951. This was a sleek affair that helped boost top speed of the TD underpinnings from the 80mph achieved by a standard car to a whopping 120mph.
Registered as UMG 400, Phillips’ car suffered engine failure in France, but was so promising that MG built another, EX175, in 1952. The crucial difference this time was that to enable the occupants to sit lower in the car, a new chassis was developed with the side members spaced further apart. MG wanted to put this into production right away, but BMC’s top brass turned it down because they had just signed a deal to build the Austin-Healey and saw this as too much internal competition.
In fact MG had built two EX175 chassis, and when their production proposal was
