Page 55 - Sample pages "Kim: A Biography of M.G. Founder Cecil Kimber" by Jon Pressnell

This 1930s M.G. publication managed to get the date of ‘Old Number One’ wrong.
Faulty memory? Subtle warping of history to tell a good story? Flattery of old friend Mathews? It doesn’t really matter. The main point is that ‘Old Number One’ wasn’t a production model, and spawned no series-made derivatives. It was a dead-end, not a vital step on the creation of the marque. Its main importance is that it has survived, today incorrectly painted in a ‘look-at-me’ red, to become a potent if misused marketing tool. In the words of Cecil Cousins, “it wasn’t Number One, it was a one-off bastard”.
Perhaps the last observation on the matter should be left to Wilson McComb: ‘To this day there are some who, despite all evidence to the contrary, still insist that the 1925 Land’s End car must be the first M.G. Their ability to believe what they want to believe, come what may, would almost compel respect if it were not so ridiculous,’ he writes in M.G. by McComb. So we’ll eliminate ‘Old Number One’ from this enquiry.
The next candidate raised its head in the February 1938 issue of The Sports Car when the M.G. house magazine noted that a Brian H. Morgan had been in touch, asking if his M.G. Super Sports, sold new in July 1925, was the first of the line. No, said the magazine: ‘the first M.G. was sold to a Mr Jack Gardiner in 1924’. When recording his reminiscences for Lytton Jarman, Gardiner said that he regarded his car as the first of the line. He has a point.
But let’s put to one side for a moment the Gardiner car. Stand back, and there is a clear lineage of cars, Bullnose and Flatnose, all carrying the same name and which continue with this nomenclature until late 1927. This lineage begins with the six Raworth two-seaters, the first of which were built and sold in 1923. These cars did not lead to a continuing production run of identical models.
Such a production run was however initiated after the construction of the Gardiner four-seat tourer, with subsequent cars, or at least the most common open two-seaters and four-seaters, closely following its style of coachwork. In setting the template for all future M.G. Super Sports, the Gardiner car does indeed have a claim to being the first of the line, and thus to that line starting in
521 Postscript: When Should the M.G. Centenary be Celebrated?
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