Maidstone Sports Cars is infamous for its harebrained projects including an MGB 4x4, GT RV8 and this MGB half car. We had to find out more...

Word and pictures: Sarah Harrington-James

In times of economic woe it is often the small, independent garages that end up taking a knock as classic and sports car owners react by making their own cutbacks. However, it’s not all doom and gloom for every specialist if the people employed learn to diversify and have the enthusiasm and drive to try something a little bit different.

You could say Maidstone Sports Cars comes under this banner. Headed up by Andy Marsh who started the business some 27 years ago, he now leads a highly-skilled team of six others at the company’s farm-based premises in Headcorn, Kent. ‘I was always good mechanically and initially into motorbikes, which my father really disliked,’ remembers Andy. ‘Then when I was about 15, an MG Midget crashed into our hedge at home and my father bought it off the guy for £20. He said to me: “Restore that.” Which I did by myself – and it won a concours when I was 17.’

That was the start of Andy’s MG addiction, helped at the time by the Youth Enterprise Allowance Scheme that encouraged him to start up a business. He continues: ‘In the early days I just used to do MG, but as time moved on we diversified into Jaguar, Triumph and also Lotus. The business grew and we moved to our current premises in 1997. When the MGF and the Lotus Elise came out, we ended up splitting the company into two halves – the modern and classic.’

Behind the scenes MSC has campaigned MGs in racing, too. An MGB race car that the team built in 2000 from scratch to compete in the BCV8 Championship went out and won its class and the overall series in its first year. In 2001, MSC entered the MGF Challenge Cup and finished second overall before leaving racing for a while to concentrate on Honda Type R 2.0-litre engine conversions for the Series 1 Lotus Elise. In just three to four days of fine fettling, Andy claims this turns the little British-built sports car into an absolute weapon. Funnily enough, this gave him the idea for one of his next big projects – dropping in the 300+bhp supercharged/charge cooled engine from his Exige into an MG TF. Andy’s eyes light up as he reveals his current plans to make it look nothing out of the ordinary and shock everyone on an MG track day.

It comes as no surprise that most of these harebrained schemes start from trivial banter during the tea break. What makes things different in this case is that even ideas that perhaps seem ridiculous or pointless (but are guaranteed to put a smile on your face) have been given the go ahead. Take the MGB half car for example. Looking from one side it appears to be a well-restored MGB in Old English White where all the panels fit perfectly, finished off with a red leather interior. But walk around the other side and it tells a completely different story – and gives a whole new meaning to open-top motoring!

Contact
Maidstone Sports Cars, The Oast House
Great Tong Farm, Headcorn TN27 9PP
Tel: 01622 890233 www.maidstonesportscars.co.uk

To read more about this MG see the March 2012 issue of MG Enthusiast on sale now - available here.