Page 36 - Sample pages "Kim: A Biography of M.G. Founder Cecil Kimber" by Jon Pressnell

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Chapter Twelve: Goodbye to Motor Racing
lead to an equally inevitable upward spiral of spending, as each party sought to best the other.
Illustrating this is a comment in the July 1935 issue of the M.G. in-house magazine. The performance of L. P. Driscoll in beating the two quickest Abingdon cars up Shelsley Walsh in his blown Austin Seven was duly hailed. ‘Every M.G. and Austin enthusiast has rejoiced for years in the keen competition between the two marques. This brilliant show of Driscoll’s has put us all on our toes,’ commented The Sports Car – and then went on to take a dig at the Austin’s old-fashioned engine: ‘Maybe he was fired with some of the enthusiasm which accounts for Bobby Kohlrausch’s amazing Midget records. A bit over 130mph with 750cc will take some beating with a side-valve engine.’
The following year Austin would abandon its side-valve power unit in favour of an advanced twin-cam engine in a brand-new racer designed by the talented Murray Jamieson. With this in prospect, all the indications were that competition on the track between Longbridge and Abingdon would soon move up a gear, with the racing budgets for both companies rising to match. That three of the R-types were later given a twin-cam head designed by Laurence Pomeroy and Michael McEvoy indicates how these friendly hostilities might have evolved.
An examination of the M.G. accounts suggests that Morris management was right to be concerned about the cost of M.G. involvement in racing, as a proportion of its overall turnover. From the figures that can be found in Appendix 1, immediately apparent is a nearly five-fold rise in 1931, the £3,891 jump accounting for nearly 30 per cent of that year’s losses. An informed
The R-type of D.L. Briault holding off Eddie Hall’s K3 in the 1935 British Empire Trophy race at Brooklands. The angle of lean of the R-type’s wheels is very noticeable: the envisaged remedies were dampers better able to cope with the suspension travel, uprated torsion bars, and an adjustment of front-to-rear spring rates. (National Motor Museum)
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