A Biography of M.G. Founder Cecil Kimber, Reviewed

A review by Pete Vack

One might contemplate what our lives might be like if some historical personality had not existed. What would our world be like had there been no Henry Ford, Enzo Ferrari, Ferdinand Porsche? Obviously things would be different, at least for many of us.

But those are the big guns. So let’s toss up another name for you: Cecil Kimber. Without Kimber, there would (probably) not be an MG, and without an MG there would likely not be a car to fuel the sports car movement in the U.S. and if that was the case, we would (probably) not be here today writing and reading this. We might have done without Ferrari, without Porsche, and perhaps without Ford. But where would we be without MG?

No matter what you drive, you should be interested in reading Dalton Watson’s latest book, Kimber, A biography of M.G. Founder Cecil Kimber by Jon Pressnell. (Did you notice the M.G.? There are two ways of writing the initials of Morris Garage. One is the traditional, pre-war variety with periods; M.G. This is the manner in which Pressnell chose to use throughout the book. The other is simple MG, as is the post-war fashion. In this review we’ll primarily use MG as it is far easier on the typist’s fingers.)

Anyone who has read Classic and Sportscar is no doubt familiar with the work of Jon Pressnell. Living in France, Pressnell wrote the excellent biography of Marcel Pourtout, reviewed here. He authored Morris, the Cars and the Company, which won the Michael Sedgwick Award in 2014, and led him to writing the biography of Cecil Kimber. An MG owner himself, he is eminently qualified to write the Kimber bio.

Kimber’s father and uncles were involved in the printing business, taking him and his family to the suburbs of Manchester. Cecil Kimber was born in 1888 and his brief life encompassed the late Victorian era and the British industrial revolution to the end of World War II; as a youth, Kimber studied photography, learned to sail, and suffered a major motorcycle accident which left him with one leg shorter than the other. Shortly after the accident he lost his mother to cancer, fell out with his father over business decisions, married, raised a thoroughly modern yet often difficult daughter, got a divorce, married again, created the MG car company and was responsible for its many successes on and off the racetrack, and was sacked at the peak of his career. What a story!

The motorcycle accident in 1910 did not deter Cecil and the insurance settlement enabled him to purchase more bikes and then automobiles. By 1915 he was married and well enough off to own a Singer, pictured here with his bride Renee. Getting into the motor trade seemed natural for the young man, who was already engaged in minor competitions with both cars and motorcycles.

With access to the Kimber’s family album, Pressnell takes us through Kimber’s life with a marvelous collection of art, photos, drawings and recollections, giving us a very personal look at his upbringing, from the homes the family lived in to the very operation in the hospital taken while doctors strove to save his left leg after the motorcycle accident. Pressnell acknowledges the use of The Kimber Centenary Book, edited by Richard Knudsen and published by the New England M.G. T Register; included in that collection were the personal and very telling memoirs of Kimber’s daughter Jean, as well as the recollections of others such as Bobbie Walkington and John Dugdale. Pressnell was also invited into the homes of Kimber family members, and had full access to letters, drawings and photographs. This resulted in a rich, vibrant, well illustrated, well documented and very personal biography which makes Cecil Kimber, his faults and achievements, come into full focus.

We can’t imagine a life without an MG, and it would be equally hard to imagine a library without a copy of Pressnell’s biography of Cecil Kimber. Buy it, read it, cherish it.

After a series of positions in the auto industry Kimber was hired by William Morris (who has his own chapter) as Sales Manager of Morris Garages in 1921. One might envision a tiny lockup in which fascinating Morris based race cars were constructed. Morris Garages was actually a large dealership located in Oxford (the college town) and a nice sideline of this and other dealerships was the ability to modify the existing line of cars to suit customer’s demands. That experience also led to the construction of entire cars, again based on Morris, Wolseley, or associated manufacturer’s products, such as engines and transmissions.

What constituted an MG was not always entirely clear, and not until 1927 were cars actually licensed under the name M.G.(with periods). But it was the introduction of the four cylinder SOHC Midget and the six cylinder K3 which brought fame throughout England and Europe. By the mid thirties it seems that Kimber was the fair haired boy, secure in his career, his successes and his marriage.

Pressnell has the difficult job of describing the many faces of MG as it grew while at the same time chronicling Kimber’s life as a father of two girls, as a husband facing marital woes, and problems dealing with Sir Nuffield and the Morris company, who had different ideas about how money should be spent (in short Kimber loved racing, Morris and company did not). Racing put MG on the map. When the racing budget was gutted, Kimber resorted to record runs, and with Goldie Gardner, made the name magic from US to Germany. Kimber and MG were at the top of its game no matter what the corporate rules and budgets demanded.

One cannot write of Kimber without writing about the cars that came out of the Morris Garages, and Pressnell does it with logic and fortitude. Describing the plethora of the MG alphabet of models is not an easy job and we will not attempt it here. What is perhaps lesser known to non MG types is the use of the Wolseley SOHC four and sixes in the Midget and K series. Yet even before the war, in what seems like a retrograde step, a conventional but durable pushrod four was adapted for use. An overhead cam engine would not roll out of Abingdon until the MGA Twin Cam.

We wonder how things would have been different if Kimber had been allowed to develop and market for the road the 1935 R type, a race car of which nine were built, featuring all independent suspension, a backbone frame and a highly tuned supercharged 748cc SOHC Wolseley which produced 110 hp. It was a move that would have possibly put MG more into the technical league of Lotus and taken the company in an entirely different direction. But as it was, there was no more Cecil Kimber to carry on, and in the post war period all that Abingdon had left was the MGTB, a relic from the 1930s, which was slightly modified to become the MGTC. The cute, inexpensive, lovable and easy to build and maintain TC launched the sports car revolution. But would that have happened with a two passenger hi-tech R type?

Which brings us to wonder about Kimber’s role in the success of the MGTC Stateside.

Unlike most books, I decided to dispense with thumbing through the pages, scanning the layout, chapters, indexes, overall quality etc., since the publisher, author and layout artist meant that I would search in vain for negatives. I knew very little about Kimber and I wanted to enjoy the book, and so read it page by page, never fast forwarding to the future, taking it like a novel. And indeed, every page held something new and interesting. I loved it.

Being aware of the effect of the MGTC on the Colonies, I was eager to read about the impact of MG on pre (ARCA) and post war sports car activity and sales in the U.S. What effect did this have on the health of the MG car company? What influence did Kimber have on the U.S. market? Were his cars designed for the U.S. and why did they succeed so unexpectedly Stateside? Having owned a MGA coupe myself, I eagerly awaited to see the chapter on MG in the US.

It never came. There is not one word about MG in the States either before the war or after. But that is not a fault of the author. For as I learned in time and did not know beforehand, Cecil Kimber died in 1945 after getting sacked as the head of the MG car company. A few imports to the US before the war did not warrant a great deal of attention, and sadly he did not live to see the tremendous success of the marque in the US after the war.

I bet he would have enjoyed that.