You like motorsport and you are reasonably well off but you’re not a milionaire. You like the idea of racing but you don’t have a car. You’ve looked at historics and note that there are loads of Cobra’s, GT40s, E Types and Elans, but amongst all of them, there’s an old MGB plugging around looking for class points.

It may be fair to say that without MG, motorsport history would be a lot different.

This is the marque that produced umpteen versions of its road cars just so that its customers could go racing. Nuvolari raced a K3 Magnette at the 1933 Ards Tourist Trophy, he finished first in the 1100cc class. The K3 was also the class winner in the 1933 Mille Miglia in the hands of George Eyston and Count “Jonny” Laurini.

Of course we tend to think of MG as being the MGB, not unreasonable since it was at one time the world’s most popular sports car and possibly the most prolific model raced worldwide.

In the book “The Works MGs” by Mike Allison and Peter Browning (ISBN 0 85960 603 2), there is a quite comprehensive list of events undertaken by MG drivers and their results. Starting with trials in 1924, by 1930 MG was the first car under 1,000cc to finish a 24hrs race (at Spa Francorchamps). These were not large capacity front running GTs and sportscars think; Bentley, Alfa Romeo, or Talbot, but as with the whole of its history, these MGs were class winning “voiturettes” or small capacity sports cars.

Then there was the record breaking. Again MG went for the small capacity classes and between 1930 and 1950 they notched up around 80 land speed records.

Post war the MGA followed by the MGB would be the chosen racing cars and they were also pretty successful, albeit they would often be outgunned by Porsche’s 356 and 911 both of which possessed dynamically much better underpinnings. Nonetheless in 1966 MGB registration No. GRX 307D won the Marathon De La Route outright. That same year this car also won the GT Category and its class in the Spa 1000 km.

Personally, the marque missed an opportunity with the MGC GTS. Although the road version wasn’t well received, history tells us that once the handling issues were understood, the car had great potential and in my opinion, the GTS version looks just right.

So, as far as the marque is concerned, isn’t it fair to say that without MG, motorsport history would be somewhat different? And back to my point about historic racing. A well sorted and well driven MGB can still be excellent fun, it can be entered in major historic events such as the Spa 6hrs, Gentleman Drivers with Masters Historic Racing, in the UK Equipe Classic Racing or the CSCC, the HSCC and the HRDC and others

Obviously the marque is now owned by a Chinese company and can no longer be called “British”, but likewise Rolls Royce Motors and Bentley are German owned and, Jaguar Land Rover is Indian.

Considering the history, it is unsurprising and not a little pleasing to see that Goodwood has selected MG as the centrepiece of this year’s Festival of Speed.