The Curious Case Of The LE MANS MGP

It baffled experts for years, but the story of this 1955 ex-works MGA Le Mans racer has been unraveled at last

This one would make a good feature for Detective Monthly magazine, if such a thing exists. It's the story of MG EX182/38, originally a 1955 Le Mans MG team car -and a very complicated story it is, too. Ex-works cars attract a substantial premium, and most prized are obviously those preserved in something close to original condition. The trouble is that those old works teams altered their competition cars frequently, and in many cases fundamentally. Restoring a car with such a muddled history can present a puzzle.

1955 Mga Ex182/38 Le Mans Racing Car

When the present owner, Jon Savage of Rhode Island, USA, first saw LBL 301 in 2004, it was in Jerry Goguen's collection on the Vermont/New Hampshire border. Goguen, who died in 2002, was a great enthusiast and his museum was regarded as the world's largest private collection of MGs. The car, described there as 'Le Mans car EX182/38 driven by Ted Lund/Hans Waeffler', was for sale at the time and had attracted plenty of attention. Many had come to inspect it, but all had declined to make an offer. It's no secret that when he was alive Goguen was asking a very high price, and it's equally public knowledge that EX182/38 had perplexed the experts for years. For a start, it wasn't the Lund / Waeffler car at all...

Jon, an amateur enthusiast clued up on MG history, was just as puzzled as all the others when he got to inspect it closely. It just didn't seem to add up. It looked like a 1955 Le Mans MG but the body was steel, not aluminum, and it was missing the four wheel disc brakes that he suspected had been fitted later on. The Le Mans dashboard was there, however, as were the proper seats, along with some internal aluminum panels, and signs that the correct 20 gallon fuel tank had once been fitted.

It's no secret that when he was alive Goguen was asking a very high price, and it's equally public knowledge that EX182/38 had perplexed the experts for years

Jon was intrigued but it was his sons, Justin and Jeremy, who encouraged him to buy it. Back at home, they set about inspecting it closely and immediately found an important serial number marked on the transmission: EXP5, indicating Le Mans 1955. They still did not know what their car really was, but it was important enough to get in touch with one of the world's leading MG competition car experts, Bob West. As it happened, Bob had previously visited Goguen's museum, and had been as nonplussed by EX182 / 38 as everybody else. In 2006, the car was shipped to Bob's workshop in East Hardwick, Yorkshire, to be fully dismantled and investigated.

Step by step, evidence was accumulated, with even the Yorkshire Police being called in to check the chassis. Using forensic equipment, they found a serial number that Bob recognized: it proved the chassis to be an Abingdon Competitions Department replacement made in September 1956. Traces of original British Racing Green paint on the oil cooler confirmed the 1955 Le Mans history of that part, while similar traces of brighter green paint on the remaining inner aluminum panels and on the chassis showed that EX182/38 had been one of the Fitzwilliam Racing Team cars in 1957.

They were getting there, but the picture was still sketchy. Studying old race reports, they realized it must be the same MGA that had seen success in the 1959 British club racing season, driven by an American whose name was given as Major WJH Southam. And so, logically, Jon set about tracking down this Major Southam.

Yet there was nothing about him in US military records. Jon's son Jeremy then researched every W Southam in the USA. He found 84 of them and, on New Year's Day in 2006, the Savage family began calling each W Southam on the list. They reasoned that nearly everybody would be at home that day, but all they managed to do was to reunite a lot of surprised Southam relatives.

Not one of those Southams turned out to be their man, so they tried the same tactic with the Canadian telephone book. Goguen had bought the car in Ontario, and just one of the 31 Canadian W Southams they found was located there. They rang his number first, asking whether he was the Major WJH Southam who had raced at Goodwood in 1959.

He said: 'I don't know where you got that "Major" thing and WJH Southam was my great, great uncle... but I'm Wilson Southam and I raced an MGA at Goodwood in 1959.' Bingo.

Jon, his two sons and Bob West went to Ontario to visit Wilson Southam, a lively old boy who recalled his time at Oxford University. He had been a wealthy young man from a family that owned newspapers, and radio and Clockwise from above Dundrod 1955, and this snap by a mechanic confirms that the experimental works aerodynamic body, raced only once, was wrecked there; the racing cockpit, now correctly restored; Goodwood chicane with Tony Dron testing EX182/38, which is appropriately back in Fitzwilliam Racing Team green and white livery today.

TV stations right across Canada. He acquired the MG after taking his Austin-Healey to the BMC Competitions Department for repairs in 1958; a friend had crashed it sometime before and the handling was never right after that. When Southam returned to collect his car a few days later, Marcus Chambers, the BMC competitions manager, gave him the bad news: the 'Healey's chassis was too badly damaged; Southam would not be racing it that weekend.

Not one to miss a trick, for the young Canadian was clearly a man of means, Marcus Chambers told Southam to wait. Chambers disappeared for some time; when he returned he took Southam to meet MG's director and general manager, John Thomley. A deal was offered in which Southam might be loaned one of the ex-Le Mans cars. Since its return from the Fitzwilliam Racing Team at the end of 1957 it had been under a dustsheet at Abingdon. The chassis was EX182/38.

Since its return from the Fitzwilliam Racing Team at the end of 1957 it had been under a dustsheet at Abingdon. The chassis was EX182/38.

Southam accepted the terms offered and raced the car in England in 1958 and 1959. Two British friends, Chris Spender and Nicolai Ouroussoff, were engineering undergraduates at Oxford who volunteered their services as mechanics. Bob recently took the car to show it to Ouroussoff at his home in Gloucestershire, and he recalled being in the Competitions Department while the MGA was receiving attention. Ouroussoff remembered seeing an original, somewhat battered aluminum body hanging up in a sling, still in Fitzwilliam Racing Team colors. Anew steel body, in red, was fitted for Southam before the start of the 1959 season, and Bill Boddy's report in Motor Sport after the Goodwood meeting on 14 March referred to 'Southam's Le Mans ex-Camegie MG, now re-bodied...' Southam had bought the car from MG in February 1959 and took it home to Canada at the end of that year.

So far, so good. It's on record that Southam later traded the car in Hamilton, Ontario. In the early 1960s Louis Gehring acquired it and around '73 or '74 sold it to retired teacher and MG enthusiast Gordon Whatley. Former Abingdon works team mechanic Henry Stone advised Whatley to rebuild it to resemble its 1955 Le Mans appearance, and helped in that work. Whatley sold it to Goguen in 1981.

Jon's next job was to find out exactly what had happened to the car before Southam bought it. With so much information already pinned down, the detective work was becoming easier, but it's still befuddling for us as outsiders, partly because of a cock-up at Abingdon in 1955. Some chassis numbers and registration numbers were muddled up in Competition Department records, so we need to go back to the start of the EX182 MGA programme to see what really went on.

In the early 1950s, John Thornley and the MG Car Company had been frustrated in their attempts to replace the old T-series MGs, which still looked distinctly pre-war. They knew a modem, more aerodynamic MG was needed urgently, but internal politics at BMC forced them to hold their fire - MG had to leave the way clear for the new Austin Healey 100.

When they were finally given the green light, the EX182 cars they built looked like the new MGA, but they were specially built prototypes designed for racing, each having Dunlop alloy racing wheels, thin aluminum body, full-length under-shield, metal tonneau over the passenger area, and a single racing screen for the driver. The engines were 1489cc BMC B-series four-cylinders, fitted with Weslake developed cylinder heads that raised the power from 69bhp (as fitted to the Magnette) to 82.5bhp. Other special parts included the 20 gallon fuel tank and a long-range lamp within the grille. A differential oil cooler was fitted, with an air scoop for it under the car. The brakes were still drums all-round, with competition linings, and the overall weight was incredibly low, only 724kg (15961b).

If you try to check chassis numbers and registration numbers against race numbers for the EX182 cars at Le Mans in 1955, you will find conflicting information in a wide variety of sources.

Thornley's plan was to enter them for the 1955 Le Mans 24 Hours, coinciding with the launch of the new MGA road car. When that launch was delayed for three months by production difficulties at Morris Bodies, he bravely went ahead with the Le Mans race anyway. This gained him good publicity in the motoring press, especially from former racer and technical editor of Autosport John Bolster, whose glowing reports of the EX182 helped to create keen demand for the MGA.

Four EX182 MGs were taken to Le Mans, one as a spare. The most successful of the three that raced - driven we know now by Miles and Lockett was this car, which finished 12th. The MGs were timed at 117mph on the straight and could lap at over 90mph. The next best EX182 MG finished 17th, driven by Ted Lund and Hans Waeffler, but the third car was effectively destroyed in Dick Jacobs' horrific accident at White House Comer, which ended his driving career. It has never been satisfactorily explained. Although spectacular, the crash attracted little publicity, happening as it did just after the infamous 1955 accident opposite the pits, still the worst disaster in motor racing history.

If you try to check chassis numbers and registration numbers against race numbers for the EX182 cars at Le Mans in 1955, you will find conflicting information in a wide variety of sources. It's confusing that the registration number LBL 301 was apparently assigned to Dick Jacobs' car. That was simply an administrative mistake - in fact, LBL 301 always belonged to this car, EX182/38.