My main critique of its styling was:
"The front fender seems a little too long and bland, virtually featureless. But in the area around the rear of the cockpit, we find a busy set of details -- the rear cockpit curve, the door cut-line, the transition to the rear fender, the rear fender itself, and the wheelhouse and rear wheel. All this attracts the eye, making the front part of the car seem too long. It also gives the rear a sort of tacked-on look."
I still hold those views, though my suggested solutions are somewhat different now.
Today's post deals in more detail with the coupé MGA model. A college fraternity brother owned one, and once we drove across Washington State in it to visit our fraternity chapter at Washington State College (as it was named then). That was long ago, so I remember little about it. Given the damp climate in western Washington as well as that of the British Isles, marketing a coupé version made some sense for MG. One nice feature was that besides having decent weather protection, when inside one didn't see its awkward styling. (To be fair, the same concept applies to being in a beautiful car. So apologies for my snark.)
Below I compare the MGA coupé to the basic roadster model.
The MGA was transitional in its design. Previous MG sports car styling had its roots in the 1930s, as I discussed here in my post "T-Type MG Roadsters." MGAs had a similar layout: a long hood and the driver's seating position aft of the center of the car. Its styling theme was in line with 1950s vintage sports car fashions. The MGA was succeeded by the much more modern MGB in 1962.
Coupés got a large, curved windshield.
This shows the seating position and the collection of elements seen between the door's aft cutline and the rear wheel opening. A flowing fenderline without the frontal shape of the rear fender would have looked nicer.
The coupé's elements are concentrated between the cowling and rear axle line, adding even more visual clutter than found on the roadster. It seems that the design policy was to minimize coupé tooling while maximizing use of roadster tooling. A better passenger compartment greenhouse design might have had a flatter roof blended into a fastback trunk area. Instead, we see an awkward looking lump with badly shaped windows.
Rear quarter view.
The backlight window is in three segments with divisions blackened rather than chromed, so as to give the appearance of full wraparound. But the overall shape -- pulled down at the corners -- adds to the clutter discussed above. A wider C-pillar (less wraparound) might have helped. Even so, the design was hopelessly flawed, given the tooling constraints the stylists had to deal with.
I had no idea there was ever a coupe model of these. Huge advantage: actual roll up side windows instead of side curtains. Roof that doesn't take 15 minutes to put up and doesn't leak.
ReplyDeleteDisadvantage: not a convertible. In certain situations there's nothing like a roofless car, but modern cars with far more sloped windshields tend to put the top of it much closer so they don't quite do what they used to do.