Standard or Modified

 This is a very personal question and can mean something different to each person asked. I'm a huge fan of originality in most things. I think well designed and built things are a pleasure to own and use. People much smarter than me have put time, effort and resources into designing and making something to suit a purpose that I want to engage in. However, and here's the big however, most things I enjoy are never quite exactly what I want and I enjoy both working on things and having something unique that fits my preferences better than the designer could have anticipated. I personally think the MGB was pretty perfect as it was for the restrictions placed upon it by the parent company, markets and expectations of the time. I have owned and driven many completely stock cars in my life and they mostly do exactly what they were designed to do. I am also an eternal tinkerer. Not just with cars but in other areas of my life and as such I like to understand how and why something does what it does and spend time working out if that something can be changed to suit me better.

I don't believe that any car (or product) is perfect in every way and while I understand statements like "the factory would have done that if it was necessary" I also don't believe that to be true. All products have restrictions put on them in the form of costs, design limitations, expectations of the market, availability of parts, government regulations and target audiences. That's just how the world works so while I have the utmost respect for the guys at Abingdon, their road cars were always a compromise of these forces. I think they did truly amazing things within these restrictions, but they were restrictions non the less. 

In my younger days I modified and thrashed original Minis. We did terrible things to those little gems, and they mostly took it with grace and humor. I never really modded my old MkI MGB because I thought it was more exotic than it actually was. I actually did more to my old '67 Jaguar than I did to my MG which today seems kinda weird. However, when I bought my current forever MGB I decided part of the process was to relive old performance tuning days and get a small feeling of those BMC and BL special tuning events. The MGB, much like the original Mini, is an immensely satisfying car to do this with as they're lots of fun to drive and very tunable, and there were lots of them made so it's not like putting a front chin spoiler on a D type Jag. In a world where restomods and engine and gearbox swaps are common practice I also enjoy the limitations of working with mostly original parts or at least period correct parts. There's something special about trying to make something fairly mundane more special. There's a movement in the hot rod community where guys are going away from big blown V8s in early 30's Fords and building the original side valve 4 pots to within an inch of their lives and I like that idea more than dropping a big engine into a small car.

MGBs can be made to go faster, handle better and look good fairly cheaply if that's what you want. Engineering machine work is getting harder and more expensive to do so working with what you have, or you can find sometimes makes more sense and the basic MGB package already works really well. As of 2026 parts are cheap and plentiful. Be patient and diligently watch Gumtree, eBay etc. and you will find lots of great parts to use at really good prices. It took me 2 years to collect the parts to build my new engine, but it cost very little if you're prepared to wait. Uprated suspension parts are available new, and 2nd hand and the brakes need very little work as the factory set up works very well as long as they're in good condition. I know first-hand that if you're patient and resourceful you can modify your MGB cheaply and still use it as a very reliable, enjoyable daily driver.