Sebring the noise

SEBRING
THE NOISE
The lightweight GTS was the ultimate MGC, built for the
toughest endurance races the Sixties could offer. Buckle
up for a ride in one of only two works cars built
Words MIKE GOODBUN Photography LYNDON MCNEIL
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[MGC GTS racer]
Reach for the door handle and you will notice how
the panel around it is ever so slightly deformed
and the paint cracked – that’s thin aluminium for
you, only the floorpan is steel. The lightweight
door delicately latches shut, requiring a firm
hand through an open window to pull it to. It’s
starkly black inside, but not sparse, with soft cloth
covering the transmission tunnel and fully-fitted,
though simplified, door cards.
It’s not dark either – look above and you’ll find
the C’s original light beige headlining and a solitary
sunvisor still in place. Long extension levers sprout
off the flick switches on the crackle-black finished
dashboard, each neatly Dymo-labelled.
Glance forward, past the small, drilled three-spoke steering
wheel, and you’re reminded that Paddy Hopkirk and Andrew
Hedges stared through the same windscreen on RMO’s last major
outing, the 1969 Sebring 12-hours race in Florida, USA.
Entered in the 3-litre Prototype class by BMC’s North American
importer alongside the other works-built GTS (MBL 546E), both
were pitted against purpose-built machines like the Ferrari 312P of
Chris Amon and Mario Andretti. Hopkirk and Hedges raced flat out
from 11am to 11pm on March 22 to a trouble-free finish, 15th overall
and sixth in class, while Amon and Andretti came second overall
and took the prototype category spoils.
Only 35 of the 70 starters finished the 12-hour Sebring event that
year, which was as notoriously gruelling as a full 24 hours at Le
Mans because the airfield surface was so rough. Pedro Rodriguez
and Chuck Parsons’ NART Ferrari 250P was only classified 47th, and
all of Alfa Romeo’s Tipo 33s retired. The GTS may not have been a
hare compared to the Ferrari and race-winning Ford GT40s, but it
was hardly a tortoise either, proving to be light, agile, tough and
fast. When you consider that the sister car came tenth overall and
third in class there a year earlier, the result definitely wasn’t a fluke.
Prod the accelerator a few times to prime the triple Weber 45
DCOE carburettors, thumb the top hat-like starter button nestling
below the speedometer and the 202bhp three-litre straight-six
chunters into action. It’s surprisingly straightforward; with a Jaguar
Lightweight E-type you have to follow a strict start procedure to
avoid an expensive engine rebuild.
The straight-cut, close-ratio gearbox is obstructive at rest, first
feeling slightly further to the right than you expect, but its stiff,
short movements crispen on the move and you’re soon slotting
between ratios swiftly. From the off, the shriek of gear whine builds,
while the exhaust note crackles and growls as the Webers spit and
clear their throats. On a balmy English summer day, not dissimilar
in temperature to Florida in March, the cabin soon heats up.
With neat fuel smells filling your nostrils and sweat beads
forming on your forehead, your comfort receptors are beaten
into submission by their thrill-seeking counterparts. You want
more and more of the crisp rasping and gargling noises; the feel of
pressing harder and later on the double-width brake pedal, twin
servos forcing the fluid around the all-disc system; and pointing the
cowled headlight nose towards another straight.
Bumper-less GTS sports
bulging wheelarches to
match the standard
car’s go-faster bonnet
Triple-Weber carbs add
snorts, pops and gargles
to the trademark BMC
phutting sound
Minimal xxxg look trim but archaic not
sparse – there’s even the
original headlining and a
sunvisor for the driver
OWNING A WORKS MGC GTS
As the last Abingdon-built works car, RMO 699F sits perfectly
in Dave Saunders’ garage, which also includes the last works
Austin-Healey 3000 – as rallied by Timo Makinen on the 1965
RAC – and an ex-Sebring 12-hours works MGB ‘6 DBL’.
All of Saunders’ cars are used where fans can get close to
them, not left to fester in a private hidey-hole. ‘I ticked the Le Mans box
by racing my MGB at the Le Mans 24-Hours support race, so with RMO
we prepared it to do the Targa Florio,’ he says. ‘The Sicilians remember the
BMC cars well – loads of people came up, saying to my co-driver and I,
“Who’s Mr Hopkirk and who’s Mr Hedges?”’
It also starred at the MGC’s 40th Anniversary weekend in Stratfordupon-Avon
– as the centrepiece in the dining room.
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[MGC GTS racer]
Aluminium-bodied GTS was up
against other prototypes at Sebring,
like Ferrari 312Ps – no match for
their pace, but solid and reliable
‘Just think what might have been if a GTS had entered
the Le Mans 24-hours. It could have gone the distance’
Corners, like in all Sixties Cs, are understeer city, as owner Dave
Saunders concurs, ‘With an Austin-Healey you brake, turn in, boot
it and the back comes round, but try that in the C and it just wants
to push straight on. But it’s a forgiving car to drive.’
The GTS project began in 1967 to develop a race car and rally
successor to the Mini Cooper. A two-litre MGB-based car was initially
built for the Targa Florio because the six-cylinder C hadn’t been
launched, but with a six fitted into that aluminium bodyshell ‘MBL’
became the first MGC GTS. It was readied for the 1968 Sebring race
with the competitions department’s full arsenal of tuning parts.
An aluminium cylinder head saving 10kg sat atop a cast iron
block of 2968cc, up from 2912cc, and triple Weber carburettors filled
the engine bay above a six-branch free-flow exhaust. Adjustable
telescopic dampers were fitted at all four corners, as were Girling
disc brakes, plus there were front and rear anti-roll bars, a close-ratio
gearbox, high-ratio steering rack and limited-slip differential. All-in
the GTS weighed more than 200kg less than the MGC GT road car.
RMO was the second car built and both went to the Nürburgring
for the 1968 Marathon de la Route, a phenomenally tough 84-hour
event using both Nordschleife and Sudschleife circuits for a
17.6-mile lap. MBL, with a red painted nose, ran as high as third
before brake dramas forced a sixth-placed finish, but yellownosed
RMO had been fitted with an aluminium cylinder block – a
further 15kg saving, but cast on the standard iron-block tooling. It
overheated and threw a connecting rod through its side after 24
hours of racing, which equated to about 2000 miles.
Despite these strong showings, the infamous British Leyland
empire was now in its formative stages; the MGC GTS project was
deemed unsuccessful and swiftly canned. The cars went to America
for that final outing, the semi-works ’69 Sebring entry, RMO with
a cast iron cylinder block for reliability and a front-hinged bonnet
to give better access and to stop it lifting at speed. The remaining
bodyshells were sold off as British Leyland declared itself out.
Just think what might have been, had the aluminium engine
been properly cast. Or if a GTS had entered the Le Mans 24-hours?
Results suggest it could have gone the distance.
Prototype status means the GTS is largely ineligible for
historic racing, so there’s little opportunity to distort the past
like some classic race cars can, but could you bring yourself to
race it, even if it were eligible? The ‘Sebring’ remains a pinnacle
of the MGC’s development, its story full of the almost-highs and
crushing lows that typify the British motor industry. Now you know
what those wide-arch panels stand for, it’s OK to want them.
1968 MGC GTS Sebring works racer
Engine 2968cc straight-six, ohv, three twin-choke Weber 45DCOE carburettors
Power 202bhp @ 6000rpm Transmission Four-speed close-ratio manual,
rear-wheel drive, ZF limited-slip differential Steering Rack and pinion Suspension
Front: independent, torsion bars, radius arms, adjustable telescopic dampers, antiroll
bar. Rear: live axle, semi-elliptic leaf springs, adjustable telescopic dampers,
anti-roll bar Brakes Servo discs front and rear Weight 980kg Performance Top
speed: 150mph; 0-60mph: 6sec (est) Value now £200,000 (est)
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