>2. When did British Lealand take over MG??? I keep reading people refering
>to LBCs. I know that my '60 Land Rover and my TR3 are not LBC cars & I was
>wondering about the '68 MGBGT. I thought it was BMC in '68.
Well, I'd certainly think your Land Rover & TR3 are LBCs -- we
went through this not long ago, and LBC stands for something
like Little/Lovable British Car/Convertible. Inotherwords, it's
just something we made up here. Has nothing to do with British
(gag ick ptoo) Leyland.
B(gip)L started acquiring companies in the middle 1960s. Through
the end of 1967 and the first part of 1968, there was a company
called British Motor Holdings that was designed to stave off the
BL takeover -- BMH (not to be confused with British Motor Heritage,
the current remanufacturers of the B shell, in turn not to be
confused with the C shell, sorry) was formed by BMC's staff.
Anyway, by June of 1968, BL was in a dominant position, closing
down Abingdon Special Tuning right off the bat. (This of course
echoed Len Lord's 1935 closing of the race shop at Abingdon with
the infamous words, "Well, *that* bloody lot can go for a start.")
The announcement was made at the end -- well, it *marked* the end
of the victory celebration after the 1968 Le Mans 24-Hour race,
in which the Healey's Sprite had finished first in class.
When I repaint my '71 B, the BL tags are going to be ceremonially
burned and the ashes poured into my catbox.
Abd dob't worry about typing, TeriAnn. Some of my best friebds
are lysdexic. Besides, I took FuzzBall as a compliment... :-)
--Scott "Kim says we all have a certain fuzzy panache" Fisher
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