cracked but, as it’s not fully plastic,
it couldn’t be welded. It also needed
a new indicator and front spoiler
and that was it. We decided to
repaint the whole car, as it had been
painted before and was sporting a
few different shades of yellow.”
He has pored over the press
photos. “In Autocar, when you
see the interior, you can see
the air-con switches, and
I’ve managed to get hold of
a spec. of the car. It wasn’t
meant to have ABS,
unless specially ordered,
or a spare wheel, as they
wanted it to go racing.” As
you can see from the pictures
the Trophy has both but the
spare wheel is David’s addition as
he wasn’t keen on driving around
without one. “You can race with ABS.
I had it on my MGF race car but, when
I converted to MEMS3, it wouldn’t
work so I took it off. I missed it. I was
faster with ABS,” laughs David.
“And it was very, very rare to
have air conditioning in a car that
was supposed to be sold as a
racing car, for people to go racing.
That’s what they were aiming at:
the MGCC’s Trophy Series or the
Abingdon Series,” David explains. It
was to be an off-the-shelf racer.
Once the Trophy had been checked
over it became clear that a lot
needed rectifying mechanically. “It
had the wrong wheels. Ordinarily it
had 11-spoke alloys on it so I had to
source Trophy wheels and get them
refurbished. It needed a
head gasket, cam belt,
water pump and all
the coolant pipes,
including the metalones, discs and pads all round,
exhaust, cat, lambda, ball joints and
tyres: the usual serviceable parts but,
unfortunately, all in one go,” laughs
David. “It must have been used right
up until it had its mishap and I don’t
think it was loved. They obviously
didn’t know what they really had. It
was just a sports car to somebody.”
The interior was in a very good
condition. “Once I’d cleaned it we
found we didn’t need to change2000 MGF Trophy
52 MGE AUGUST 2019 http://www.mgenthusiast.comABOVE: The body-coloured switch panel includes rare air conditioning controls.
Splashes of yellow on the steering wheel and door cards further lift the interior.