Cecil Kimber, general manager of Morris Garages in Oxford, began selling specially bodied Morris cars in the early 1920s, and by 1924 the MG octagon was being used in advertising. The business moved through several Oxford premises before settling in 1929 at a former leather works in Abingdon, then in Berkshire, which became MG’s home for the next 51 years.
MG built record-breaking and racing cars in the 1930s, but it was the road cars that made its name: the Midgets and the T-series, whose post-war TC helped start America’s love of British sports cars, then the MGA of 1955 and the MGB of 1962, which sold more than half a million.
MG became part of BMC in 1952 and of British Leyland in 1968. Abingdon closed in 1980, and the badge was then used on sporty versions of Austin models, before returning on true MG sports cars with the RV8 and MGF in the 1990s. After the collapse of MG Rover at Longbridge in 2005 the name passed to Nanjing Automobile and then to SAIC Motor, which sells MG cars in Britain today.
