> Someone from Australia asked me about (factory) supercharged MGs,
> and I, needless to say, was completely dumbfounded! Were any
> supercharged MGs even imported to the U.S.? (From what I've heard
> from this Aussie, there are supercharged MGs in Australia!)
Of what year? It was common to supercharge the Midget and Magnette
line in the Thirties; the racing K3 Magnette that was the first car
to complete the 1933 Mille Miglia (and which won the 1100cc class)
had a blower on it. (That was some car; Nuvolari drove it in the
Isle of Man TT that same year and demolished the lap record some
six or seven times, on virtually every lap.) The famous trials
team "The Cream Crackers" used PB-series Midgets with blowers, and
were very successful in the odd British sport of trials (kind of
like a combination of autocrossing and uphill mud wrestling). And
the high-water mark of prewar M.G. racing development, the R Type,
used a 750cc four with supercharger to pilot its tuning-fork-shaped
space frame and four-wheel independent suspension. (A supercharged
M.G. Midget, BTW, was the first 750cc vehicle ever to go over 100 mph,
in something like 1930 or '31.)
In those days, the supercharger was typically driven off the crank
and mounted in front of the radiator, between the dumb-irons of the
chassis (the sections from which the leaf springs were suspended).
Typically, the supercharger had an SU carburetor mounted on its intake,
usually at the side. Some of the coolest-looking of these cars had
metal shrouds that covered the dumb-irons, with big "speed bulges"
to cover the blower and a cut-out through which the dashpot of the
SU could be seen. And of course, louvers on everything flat.
In the Fifties, it used to be possible to get mechanical superchargers
for various sports cars; I've seen M.G. TCs with the Shorrocks brand
blower installed, and of course our own Larry Colen has a blower for
a Sprite. In those days, you *could* have the factory fit a blower to
your car if you paid enough, and "enough" was usually fairly modest,
these being M.G.s rather than Isotta-Fraschinis or Bugattis.
> Correct me if I'm wrong, but I understand that there have been
> hatchback MGs manufactured during the 1980's, though they weren't
> imported here. I think these (one of which was called the Metro?)
> might have been supercharged or turbocharged. Anyway, if anyone has
> any information on supercharged MGs (including the size of their
> engines, hp, carbs, etc.), let us know!
That would be the "M.G." Metro, an Austin Metro with a little badge
engineering. When the wanks at British Phlegmsucking Leyland realized
what they'd done by killing off the British Sports Car between 1978 and
1982, they decided to bring back the Triumph and M.G. names to make
people want to buy the wretched boxes they were still producing. It
worked, sort of, but mainly in the case of the M.G. because they used
that name only on the high-performance versions of the wretched box in
question.
The Metro is actually not terribly wretched, as ubiquitous, homogeneous
Worker's-Paradise-On-Wheels bauhausmobiles go, seeing as it is descended
from the Mini with a few years of engineering evolution. There were two
versions of the M.G. Metro, one with the A+ engine delivering something
like 75 bhp, the other the Metro Turbo delivering 90 bhp and a 0-60 time
of about 9 seconds, putting it roughly comparable to a contemporary
Datsun Z car (nat. asp., of course). They went one better with the
Montego, a slightly funny looking four-door-with-hatch that used the
Austin O-series sohc engine (the one that was going to go into the
mid-engined MGD that never got built) plus turbo to get from rest to
sixty in 7.8 seconds, making it the fastest-accelerating factory M.G.
ever built, if you overlook the fact that it wasn't an M.G. and it
wasn't made by the M.G. factory.
Carbs, btw, is correct, at least for the Metro; it used a single SU,
HIF6 if memory serves, in a draw-through setup. Think of it as an
LBC version of the Chevy Sprint Turbo of about 1985 and you're not
far wrong. I seem to remember that the Montego used P.I. rather than
an SU, but the reference for that is (horrors) in the garage.
As for supercharging, it's entirely possible that this is just a case
of being separated by a common language; to be nitpickingly precise,
a turbocharger is actually a turbosupercharger, as it supercharges the
engine by means of an exhaust-driven turbine, in opposition to the
mechanically driven superchargers used before WWII (and on various
Thunderbirds and MR2s in the last few years). I wouldn't be surprised
to learn that the Australians call them all superchargers, since it
is both correct and at the same time slightly perverse, something that
I've always admired about most of the Australians I've known. :-)
--Scott "David Hume could outconsume Schopenhauer and Hegel" Fisher
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