Owner's name:	Dave and Penny Butler
Vehicle make:	MG
Registration:
Model:	B Roadster
Year of manufacture:	1972
Number of owners:	13 ( 2 were garages)
How long have you owned the vehicle?	17 Years (March 1992)
Special Features or things unique to your vehicle (belonged to royalty or eatured on telly etc):	See OUR CAR below
have you carried out any work to the vehicle?	See pictures above
History of your vehicle model or manufacturer	See MGB HISTORY below

MGB HISTORY

The MGB was launched in 1962 as a replacement for the MGA. It was initially produced in roadster form only – the GT version did not appear until 1965. The MGB had a 1800cc engine with twin 1 ½” SU Carburettors.  The factory did produce 2591 Rover V8 powered cars, all GT’s after an enterprising Ken Costello showed them it could be done.

The most significant change to the MGB occurred in 1974 when the rubber bumper cars were introduced to satisfy American safety standards.

MGB’s were also produced in CKD form, CKD stood for Completely Knocked Down kits to be assembled locally, in Australia, Belgium and Eire. This was done primarily to circumvent tariff barriers and also saved some shipping costs.

Many famous people have owned MGB’s, Terry Waite had one when he was taken hostage in Beirut, after his release the car was restored and sold for charity and Prince Charles’s first car was a MGC, which was an MGB derivative with a 3 litre straight 6 engine.

Over half a million cars had been produced when production ceased in 1980 2/3rds of which went to North America!

OUR CAR

Was built in Abingdon in late 1972 and first registered on Jan 4^th 1973 in Doncaster, Yorks. It was orange at this time, the 8^th owner changing it to red in 1979.  The car had had 10 Yorkshire owners by 1983 and it’s then owner  joined the navy, and bought the car south while stationed in Portsmouth he later sold it to a local man in Southampton. An interesting thing happened in 1998 when we were at a show in Wellington Country Park, one man in particular  was taking a great interest in our car, eventually walking on without saying anything, later he returned and started to tell me that he was sure he once owned this car  but there were a few differences now, back then it had a roll bar, rostyle wheels, a badge bar on the front and a different grill. I was able to tell him that the grill had been changed (I still had the original) and that wire wheels had also been fitted by the previous owner to me. He went away promising to look up the pictures he had of it to confirm it was the same car. A few weeks later I received a letter from him including a couple of pictures confirming he was right. The cars records show he only owned the car for just under 3 months in 1986.