Author: AndrewKB

When I read that FC 7900, the Morris Cowley Special often referred to as “Old Number One”, would be making an appearance at Bluehills Mine during the 2025 Land’s End Trial, I thought it was time to revisit some of the facts and myths surrounding the very earliest MGs and their participation in MCC Trials….

This is something of a mea culpa post. I have referred, a number of times, to the Brighton-Beer (as it became known in its later years) as famously not starting in Brighton (Sussex) nor finishing in Beer (Devon) and, although this may have been true during the trial’s heyday of the 1930s, it was not…

The car in the photo is the famous (at the time) Morris Special owned PreWar by C S L Burleigh and PostWar by Ashley Cleave. Burleigh seems to have used the car primarily for the MCC Land’s End Trials of 1937 to 1939, but Ashley Cleave was a regular competitor in many of the major…

Ken Wharton was not the first competitor to drop an 1172cc Ford sidevalve engine onto an Austin Seven chassis as the basis for a trials special, but he was certainly the first to make the combination really work. He won a number of events in 1947, and then had an incredibly successful year in 1948…