A young man was due to turn 21 in 1946 and after the war his fancy turned to a new car as a suitable present from his parents to celebrate his coming of age. Obviously a sports car would be the perfect transport and the only sports car to have would be an M.G. To ensure that he got exactly what he wanted in August he wrote to the M.G. Car Company to obtain details of their current range. The M.G. Car Company replied and sent him the brochure for the new M.G. Midget (Series TC). The young man then took this brochure to his parents and pursuaded them that this car was the right one for him. He was living near London at the time and he went to University Motors, the main M.G. dealer in London as recommended by M.G.
By October 1946 he was able to order a car and placed a deposit of £50 with University Motors for a TC. It should be noted that the receipt has a cancelled 2d stamp on it. This was a form of tax called Stamp Duty. The government required all such financial and legal documentation to have such stamps to be legal. Each cheque was also subject to the tax. As the Government owned the Post Office the revenue for the purchase of stamps used in such transactions went to the Exchequer. The tax still exists when you buy a house in England.
Due to post war rationing of steel and other resources in the UK there was a waiting list for cars in the UK and it was not before 22-8-47 that the car that was to be bought by our young man started to be built. The page from the TC build records shows that TC3382 was issued with a guarantee plate on 22-8-47 and fitted with XPAG 4017, which is still installed today. It is of interest to note that cars were not fitted with engines in strict numerical order and in fact that some such as TC3392 was fitted with a reworked engine that had been previously removed from an earlier car under guarantee (Note 1).
TC build records list
At long last the car was ready at University Motors in London and our intrepid young man arrived to take delivery. England in 1947 was a very different place from today and our young man had moved in the year since he ordered the car. When he ordered the car he lived just north of London, he now lived back with his parents 250 miles away. University Motors was situated in the heart of London, Piccadilly. He would have arrived by train as petrol rationing was in force and there would have been no petrol available for such a journey. That required to get his new car home would have consumed much of his monthly allowance for such a vehicle.
On 10 September 1947 our young man paid a total of £536 17/8d for TC3382, now registered as MG 7305, (Note 2). He had already paid a deposit of £50 so now paid £486 17/8d . Once again the receipt was made legal with a 2d stamp. The MG element of the registration is no coincidence. The prefix was issued in 1930 in London and University Motors had exclusive use of them from MG 400 onwards starting in April 1930. If you bought a new car from University Motors thereafter up until April 1948 you were offered such a plate, and our young man accepted. The actual invoice shows the breakdown of the total cost. The car was expensive. £400 was a lot of money in 1947 and would buy a small house in the regions. Purchase Tax of £115 6/8d was nearly 28%, quite a bite by the government. Delivery charges are normal today. Tax from September to Dec at £4 11/- represents the payment of road fund licence for 4 months. The payment of this tax was shown by displaying a paper disc on the car (normally in the windscreen). Finally there is a charge for supplying the number plates (MG 7305) in aluminium, silver letters on a black background. Those £2 number plates are still on the car today! Fortunately this invoice records the colour and trim of the car and it has retained the combination throughout its life. Our lucky new owner could not yet drive his new car away. Cars were in such short supply in post war Britain that any new car could be sold at a substantial premium over the list price. To put a stop to such profiteering the government decreed that all people buying new cars should agree by signing a covenant they to pay a sum if they sold the car within one year of buying it. Our young man agreed to pay £240 or more than half the purchase price should he sell the car before owning it for the specified time.
Finally he was able to drive away in his new car. The guarantee card for the car would have been filled in by University Motors and sent back to the factory where a chassis file would have been started. Sadly these were destroyed in 1968 when Leyland took over. The M.G. Car Club at Abingdon holds those for the period 1930-1935 as they were saved.
Once the ownership of the car was established, M.G. sent our young man a standard pack of brochures. This pack consisted of:
The large brown paper envelope used for postage. Not illustrated as it is well worn and the Safety Fast! Posting frank is very hard to see.
The inner envelope that contained all the goodies.
The Brown Book. Known and loved by everybody, not illustrated here due to familiarity.
Preliminary Instructions for the Maintenance of the M.G. TC. A short booklet that contains the key running and running in information for the TC. Presumably meant to be read before the Brown Book became available to the new owner.
Guarantee, spares policy and first service free card. A fine guarantee document addressed to our young man. Attached to it but not shown is a statement on the benefits of using factory supplied M.G. spares and the dangers of using others. Also attached is a card entitling the owner to a first 500-mile free service. Given that the car was now 250 miles from the dealer garage and petrol rationing was in force, this was never redeemed. Sadly University Motors is no more or I would have tried to get this free service!
Dealers and Distributors List, Season 1947. This is a small booklet listing all the UK dealers, distributors and retail dealers in 1947. From this booklet or the one of the correct period you can identify the dealers in each area at the time of publication.
M.G. Car Club Form. The M.G. Car Club was an integral part of the Company in 1947 and this invitation to join was to be expected. Luckily for us the new owner did not join the Club and therefore the form is still complete. I believe that such an invitation is once again standard when you buy a new M.G. and that when the MGF was first introduced distributors paid for the first year’s subscription.
Tyres and your M.G. Dunlop produced a little booklet entitled Tyres and your M.G. Like all tyre companies it is an exhortation to look after your tyres by checking the wheel alignment and pressures on a regular basis. Dunlop was very keen that the cars should be driven with moderation to conserve tyre life.
The compliment slip is a standard courtesy.
Girling Dampers. Girling added a single sheet flyer on their new hydraulic dampers.
Lubrication Chart. Duckam’s seem to have had quite a tie in with M.G. at this time. This is a rather nice folded card lubrication aid memoire.
Finally we have a reminder that the "Export or Die" policy remained in force for some time. A forlorn little card dated 5/8/49 in pencil tells us that tin plate is still not available for oilcans for sale within the UK.
So what was it like to own a TC in post war Britain? The colour scheme of the car was the same as that of the local police TCs and so the car was often taken for a police vehicle. The registration was an ‘old’ one (by 1947 most registrations had 3 letters) and many people thought that the car was therefore old as well. Petrol was rationed and in fact shortly after our hero bought the car the ration for non-essential motoring was withdrawn altogether. This remained the state of affairs for six months. During this time the car could not be driven and therefore it became very highly polished! Once the ration allowed a small amount for pleasure motoring, it rained for a few days and the car stayed in the garage until the weather cleared!
Not shown here as they are only applicable to TC3382/MG 7305 are the various road fund (tax) discs, insurance documents and correspondence on fuel rationing. Our young man spent some time writing increasingly convoluted letters to the authorities asking for his ration to be increased. It appears that he succeeded once in getting the ration increased but failed to get it upped a second time. For interest he also kept the unused coupons issued when rationing was reintroduced during the Suez crisis in 1956.
Notes
1. Chassis Build Date Record
The photocopied page illustrated (see above) is from one of 3 the volumes of TC records held by the M.G. Car Club at Abingdon in England and it is these primary sources that all production dates and volumes should be quoted. I believe that they also now have at least copies of all the chassis build records for TAs and TBs. These books only contain the information shown. The full build details were destroyed in the late 1960s.
2. University Motors and the MG series of registrations.
In the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland cars are issued with a registration number by the authorities when new and will normally retain that registration throughout their lives. These registrations are regional and the 2 letter registration ‘MG’ (theoretically 9999 registrations) was issued by Middlesex in 1930. University Motors in some way obtained rights to the complete sequence from MG 400 onwards in April 1930. Numbers were issued (often but not exclusively on M.G.s) until the Second World War. Issues recommenced after the war until MG 7449 or so in April 1948 when the sequence was withdrawn and the remainder issued on military vehicles. An article I have written and a list of 1200 cars with such registrations will appear another day.