Vintage Thing No 140 - MG Midge

Stephen Bailey's MG Midge during tea and cake after his successful ascent of Sutcombe Hill

A Midge was a kit car you built from plans available back in the eighties. More of a self-build affair, some parts were purchasable to ease the construction process. Most were based on Triumph Herald chassis, which made the process of construction fairly easy especially if you had a vintage style radiator shell to hand.

Stephen Bailey built a Midge but then felt he could build another one specifically for trials. Instead of a Herald he managed to find a pre-war MG chassis and used most of that as the basis for his Class 8 trials special. hardly anything else MG went into. The running gear is mostly Ford with a 1620cc Kent engine. This has a single SU on quite a long inlet tract for torque, hence that round thing on the bonnet.

I think he used Triumph uprights

I asked him how he'd registered it and he said he'd built such a long time ago the DVLA trusted anyone who was building their own vehicle to be an honest and upstanding citizen who could be relied upon to tell the truth and do a proper job.

How long ago that was, is now lost in the mists of time. He was a bit vague on the build date but then we were both in the middle of the 2015 Land's End Trial.

There's plenty of ground clearance on this bad boy

He did quite well, getting off the restart at Warleggan for instance whereas we didn't in the Allard.

There's a website for other Midges but nothing among the galleries that's as high stepping as Stephen's example.