Lot #36 - 1934 MG Q TYPE
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Auction House:Mossgreen
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Sale Name:The Motorclassica Auction
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Sale Date:14 Oct 2017 ~ 6pm
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Lot #:36
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Lot Description:1934 MG Q TYPE
Chassis No: QA 0257; Engine No: 1260/Q -
Provenance:Ex-Hope Bartlett, Jumbo Goddard
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Notes:“For this has been a wonderful year for the little cars from Abingdon. The Octagon has appeared brilliantly all over Europe in every single month of the year...Audaciously, full of confidence, the sign of the Octagon has been borne across the frontiers. Conquering, maybe, where no English cars had ever conquered. Arousing admiration; attracting attention; telling the world that the British Light Car is one of the greatest wonders of modern times. “It is cold and dark, Gather round the fire. Stare, with me, into the glowing coals, seeing strange pictures take form, vanish and come again. Pictures of hard-fought battles in foreign lands, of green cars hurtling through choking dust-clouds of excited multitudes cheering, cheering, and showering wreaths and flowers upon the drivers, And on every car, ere its picture fades into the flames that gave its birth, you will see an Octagon. And in the midst of it the symbol ‘M.G.’” The MG Magazine, Volume 1 Number 5, January 1934. The MG M Type was first introduced in 1929 and formed the basis of what was to come for nearly-40 years thereafter. The most famous of all the pre-war MGs was introduced in 1932 with the MG Magnette Supercharged more commonly known as the K3. K3s won the 1100cc class and team prize in 1933 at the legendary Italian endurance race, the Mille Miglia, at the hands of Captain George Eyston, Count ‘Johnnie’ Lurani, Lord Howe and Sir Henry Birkin, whilst the great Tazio Nuvolari drove one at the Ulster Tourist Trophy, at the time, perhaps ‘the’ event on the British motor-racing scene. In 1934, utilising a slightly narrower chassis but based on that of the K3, MG created the Q Type with an engine based on the P Type. Unlike the six-cylinder K3, this engine was a four-cylinder, but in common with the K3 it was also fitted with a supercharger. This Zoller supercharger meant that the 746cc Q Type was capable of some 120 miles an hour in two-seater format and this little racing car achieved 122 mph (196km/h) at Brooklands with George Harvey-Noble driving a single seat version. It is believed just eight were built and the N Type axles used made the car difficult to handle. In 1935 MG developed the Q Type into another legendary competition model, and perhaps today the rarest of the rare, the monoposto R Type. Q Type, chassis number 0257, the seventh of the eight cars built, was delivered new to Cec Warren in Victoria in August 1934. The earliest image (in black and white of course) we have of the car is of Warren (who in November 1953 would compete at the Australian Grand Prix in a Maserati 4CL) driving the car at Sellick’s Beach in South Australia, a hard, smooth surface measuring over 3km in length, on which aeroplanes were known to land. Just prior to the second world war the car came into the hands of Hope Bartlett of New South Wales. Bartlett, according to Brian Mossop’s obituary in the Daily Telegraph “Began his flirtation with speed in 1910 as a works rider on the then famous belt-driven Zenith motorcycle, and ended it driving an XK Jaguar to victory on Bathurst’s Mt Panorama circuit in 1951”. Indeed Bartlett, along with A.V.Turner, is credited with being amongst Australia’s first professional race car drivers, the first to make a living at the wheel of fast cars. Q Type 0257 was fast, without a doubt, and driven by Hope Bartlett it achieved the lap record for cars under 750cc at Bathurst in a time of 3 minutes 47 seconds. For the duration of the war the car was stored at P&R Williams in Sydney, the MG Distributors for NSW, which was also the distributor for Velocette motrocycles. After the war according to John Blanden’s ‘Historic Racing Cars of Australia’ the car was sold in July 1946 to Tommy Jemieson, with Frank Kleinig of Hudson Terraplane fame as his driver. To quote further from the second edition of Blanden’s book, “At Nowra, June 1947, it came fifth in the under 1100cc Championship, despite gear problems. At Castlereagh on 14 December 1947 it recorded 20.1 sec. for the standing quarter mile. “During 1948, John G. Peek bought it and proceeded to become one of NSW’s most regular competitors. It was at Mt Druitt in January 1949, and then won its class in the 1951 Australian Hillclimb Championship at Hawkesbury in April 1949. A quarter-mile sprint was held at Mt Druitt on July 10 1949 and the Q won its class with 19.55 sec. Later in the year it recorded 18.64 sec. at Castlereagh. Early in 1951 it was taken to New Zealand but its activities there are unknown. On 11 June 1951 it set a new Australian record for the standing quarter mile at 19.82 secs. and the standing kilometre of 38.88 seconds.” Although unplaced at Bathurst in October 1951 it was timed at 88.67 mph along the straight. The car was noted in the 1953 Gnoo Blas Programme for what was believed to be its last race, the same year that the car went to Gary Coglan. The car then went to Les Murphy, who also owned Q Type chassis 0256, intended as a spare. It is believed that 0257 was then briefly held by John Jarvis of Adelaide before becoming the property of John (Jumbo) Goddard in 1967. Goddard, once described by The Australian newspaper as “Bentley aficionado and all-round engineering whiz kid”, who passed away in 1984 knew Donald Campbell, raced in the Sydney to Hobart yacht race, and was an astute collector of clocks, models, boats, all things steam, and cars including a Bugatti Type 35C, and the famous Jaguar D-Type OKV1 raced by Hamilton and Rolt to second place at Le Mans. Described by the great American racing driver Briggs Cunningham as, “the true CORINTHIAN - a sportsman and adventurer to his very core” one can understand why this remarkable MG Q Type chassis 0257 appealed to a gentleman such as Goddard who revelled in, “testing the limits of man and machine, an area known to a precious few; for he was a true Corinthian.” According to Blanden, “It had been suggested that Jumbo was intending to have his friends at the Donington Musuem in England restore the car but instead it was sold and passed to Phillip Vickery around 1976, at which time a check of the chassis and engine numbers revealed that the chassis was clearly stamped QA0257, although the engine showed 1260/Q4 – not the number recorded when the car left the factory in 1934.” In 1978, 0257 was once more reunited with 0256 when Vickery sold 0257 to Ed Ison who now owned the pair. Ison with the help of Otto Stone began a restoration of 0257 which was completed in the late 1980s. Upon Ed’s death the car passed to his son Peter Ison who with Richard Moore commenced another restoration in 2009. By 2014 the car now in the possession of Richard and Elaine Moore had been rebuilt and restored cosmetically. In December 2014, this Q Type came into the possession of its current owner. He felt that the car was not performing properly and undertook major mechanical work correcting faults in the engine and Zoller supercharger. In August 2017, the car was now looking very much the same as in the 1934 photograph taken at Sellick’s Beach when owned by Cec Warren, returned to Victoria to run in the Rob Roy Hillclimb. Rob Roy being the venue of the first Victorian and Australian Hillclimb Championships in 1938 and which at the time of its construction in 1935, along with Shelsey Walsh and Prescott in the UK, was one of only three bitumen surfaced purpose built hillclimbs in the world. MG Q Type chassis 0257, whether originally dark green or black, as it is painted currently, presents a wonderful opportunity for its next owner to become a custodian of one of the purest British pre-war racing cars. 0257 is accompanied by significant documentation pertaining to and confirming its history and provenance. Whilst its long-distance oil tank is not currently connected, also included in the sale is the long-distance oil pump. Currently running on avgas it can be easily returned to run on petrol. It also has a correct tool roll included in the sale. This vehicle will be sold unregistered.
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Estimate:A$400,000 - 440,000
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Realised Price:
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Category:Automobiles & Accessories
This Sale has been held and this item is no longer available. Details are provided for information purposes only.
