With the MGA in production, and selling at a record rate for a British sports car, MG designers were keen to turn their thoughts to a successor. By this stage, most MG design was vested in a small team based at the Abingdon factory itself. Understandably they had to work closely with other parts of the enormous British Motor Corporation, forged in 1952 when the ‘Austin’ and ‘Nuffield’ businesses were combined. Although the MG men tended to align themselves as much as possible with their old Morris friends at nearby Cowley, increasingly it was the Board of Management at Longbridge which ultimately called the shots.
Early ideas, as shown in the side panel, assumed the retention of a separate chassis frame; indeed both John Thornley and Syd Enever declared that the risks of producing a monocoque or integral-chassis, open-topped sports car were just too great. No doubt the fact that Morris Motors Chief Designer, Gerald Palmer, had exhibited a monocoque proposal just as the Abingdon men were promoting their MGA might have been part of this reticence. Before long it became obvious that the extra weight and lack of rigidity of many separate chassis framed cars were ruling them out across the industry. BMC’s principal body-making ally Pressed Steel (in those days still independent of BMC) had already proved it could be done with the Sunbeam Alpine and, closer
