BUYING THE BIGGER ’B

Until the late 1960s, BMC’s sports car range was traditionally topped off by the six-cylinder ‘Big Healey’ models, a successful line that began with the Austin-Healey 100 and ended with the Mk3 3000. Those old soldiers couldn’t be kept in production indefinitely, however, not least because of increasingly strict safety legislation in the USA – but how should they be replaced?

The unlikely answer lay in the form of a six-cylinder version of the immensely popular MGB, launched in 1967 as the MGC and available in both roadster and GT guises. There was even a plan to badge-engineer the MGC into an Austin-Healey, though that never reached fruition and the idea was quietly dropped before the MGC’s launch. This made the new MGC a unique offering within the BMC sporting line-up, bringing six-cylinder power and smoothness to the MG range and endowing the Abingdon brand with a useful new flagship.

Despite the promise shown by its impressive specification, however, the MGC was destined to become one of MG’s – and BMC’s – shortest-lived models, with a production run that didn’t even reach its second anniversary.

Happily, attitudes towards the MGC have