The real cost of restoring an MGB

When describing the MGB, words like ‘seminal’ and ‘evergreen’ come to mind. A worldwide favourite, beloved among enthusiasts, it remains an obvious candidate for restoration, owing to the parts supply, advice and support network available. But should you take the plunge? The MG Owners’ Club (MGOC) stepped into the breach to advise.

Obviously a fully restored, ‘turn-key’ (ready-to-go) car is the easiest way into an MGB or MGB GT; a car that wants for nothing, while expensive, leaves you little to do but enjoy it. Not everyone can do that, however – affordable as the ‘B and ‘BGT are, there are tiers of prices, starting with the 1974-1980 ‘rubber bumper’ cars and working back.

Lancaster Insurance Services approached Roger Parker, MGOC technical author and adviser, for his take on the situation. Broadly speaking, MGB values haven’t been subject to much speculation, and restoring an MGB is best done for the love rather than the profit, as Roger explained – and it helps if you can do the mechanical and body work yourself.

He said: “It’s quite a varied situation, there’s no simple answer, [but] the simple facts are that if you want to turn a £2k car into a £4k car it will take you six grand to do it. If you want to go from an £8k car to a £20k car you’re probably looking at spending £25k.

“There is always a law of diminishing returns but the amount of investment that you have to put in the car is very dependent on how much labour you can provide, because that’s the most expensive element of any restoration.

“If you’re doing all the work yourself and only having to pay for the parts and materials then you can come probably in at a third of the cost or possibly even a quarter of the cost of having the same work done to the same standard by a professional.”

While market forces do determine what you’ll pay, some MGBs, as the Orwell quote is modified, are more expensive than others.

Roger continued: “The prices are more stable from just the condition of the cars, there are different value bands within the MG range because it was in production for 18 years. The most expensive cars are always going to be the Mk1 MGBs, especially the pre-1965 cars with pull-handles.

“If you look at a concours car in that area you’re going to be looking at £30-£35,000, whereas if you look at the same condition on a ‘late’ rubber bumper car (1974-1977) you’d be looking at the same condition car being perhaps worth £10,000, so you can see the variance there.

“Later rubber bumper cars are seen as better than the 1974-1977 cars and chrome bumper cars are seen better than rubber bumper cars, and this reflects in the value.

“Mk1 cars up to 1965 have the highest value; not far behind those are Mk1 cars up to 1967 (and early GTs in that period). Then Mk2 cars from 1968 to the start of the 1970 model year come in third place, and then of course the 1970-1974 chrome bumper cars are not far behind the 1968 to 1970 model year cars.

“If we take a 68-70 car there - £18-£20,000 value; an average car would be in the £7-£10,000 band, that’s the sort of value you’re looking at, but condition is king and with the variations you’ve got with the different bands – chrome bumper and rubber bumper, you’re looking at quite a lot of variation.

One of the greatest things about the MGB is the sheer availability of parts; you can even buy an entirely new bodyshell if things warrant it, from British Motor Heritage.

Roger concurred: “If you’re looking at the cost of a restoration, it’s going to be pretty much the same irrespective of which car you’re doing. Start off at about £13-£14k with a Heritage shell, and then spend the same again doing the rest of the car, and it’s very easy to spend £40k on a car which is at best going to be worth £20-£25,000.

“The bottom line is that you’re always going to be spending more money if you’re getting someone else to do the work for you than the car is going to worth, so you only have the justification of spending the money if you’re going to get the benefit. There’s no end value speculating, you might as well set up a campfire and throw £10 notes in it.”

Whatever MGB you end up with – and in whatever state, from rough-but-ready to concours, the MGOC can help you sort the best agreed value with your insurance company; Lancaster Insurance Services, among others, offer this service.

Without giving the MGOC’s exact process away, Roger said: “We judge a value on the car in the terms of its probably between ‘x’ and ‘y’ with £2-3k [either way] because you get quite a lot of fluctuation depending on where the car is in the country. There’s enough of the cars to see a fairly clear band of values.

“If you live in the South East [of England] you can ask a higher price and usually get it but if you have the same car advertised in the Scottish Highlands, you probably won’t even sell it. To get someone interested you’ve probably got to come down 20-25 per cent of your asking price yet the car isn’t worth any less, it’s just that you’re in the wrong place.

“Normally an agreed value for insurance is something that’s under the control of the insurance company that’s insuring the car; they will dictate the terms. Lancaster Insurance [Services], with which we’ve had a working relationship ever since Lancaster was formed, is the organiser for agreed value insurance for their clients.

“We can also provide single, stand-alone valuations for insurance purposes as well. It’s usually in response to the insurer saying ‘can you get a valuation’ rather than the insurer saying ‘we will put it through our agreed valuation scheme’. It’s always at the behest of the insurer.

The actual valuation is something we’re in control of; we will assess the value of the car and feed that back to the insurer or the client of the insurer; if there are question marks on that it won’t be very significant, it’s usually only very unusual cars where there is usually an owner who thinks their car is worth ‘x’ amount when really there’s no significance in the car’s individual status to justify it.”