Chassis No.: QA 0254

Estimate: £150,000 - £200,000 GBP

• One of only eight Q-Types made
• Known ownership history
• Restored by the late Richard Powell in 2019/2020

In 1934, the MG Car Company launched the limited edition Q-Type, which was a stripped-back, no-frills racer, with no lights or dynamo, aimed at both the amateur and seriously competitive motor sport enthusiast. It was based on the MG K3 chassis but narrower, utilising N-Type axles, while the engine was taken from the P-Type. For the Q-Type, the engine was fed by a Zoller supercharger specifically made for MG for this model, a combination that provided an unrivalled power-to-weight ratio.

This car was supplied to Kenneth Evans of the Bellevue Garage, Wandsworth, Southwest London. Kenneth Evans and his brother Denis were born into a successful chartered surveyors business, and they and their younger sister Doreen were very keen amateur racers. As a family they were very effective promoters of the MG brand, and could easily be mistaken for the official MG racing team when they arrived at race meetings with their cars in matching livery.

This car's first outing was at Donington Park, where Kenneth achieved a respectable 3rd place in the 850cc class. A photograph on file shows the car with the AIACR Q-Type two-seater body, and if the image was in colour it would show that it was painted in 'Bellevue Blue' with ivory cream wheels and a cream pinstripe from nose to tail. Towards the end of the 1934 season the engine developed problems and Kenneth contacted MG. Unable to supply such a specialised engine off the shelf, they removed the one in the Olympia show car. The new engine enabled Bellevue Garage to compete in the BRDC 500-mile race, with the driving being shared between Denis and Kenneth.

In 1935 Bellevue Garage's chief mechanic Wilkie Wilkinson, later a famous race tuner and engineer, radically remodelled 'QA0254' with the intention of giving Doreen a competitive race car of her own. The suspension was lowered and the chassis and bodywork slimmed to a monoposto design. The new cockpit with its narrow proportions suited Doreen, who was once described by a Brooklands commentator as this 'slip of a girl'.

The car's first outing and shake-down was at the Syston Park Speed Trials in Lincolnshire, with Kenneth driving the car for first time in its single-seater form. The second outing in 1935 saw Doreen Evans achieve 1st place in the Second Haw Handicap in car number '9', very much to the amazement of the excited crowd, at a record-breaking speed of 101.7 mph. The only people disappointed that day were the trackside bookies, who had listed the diminutive MG as a rank outsider up against the colossal Bentleys.

Photographs taken on the day show a serious and focused Doreen on the start line at Brooklands, while the Pathé newsreel shows a slightly apprehensive Kenneth helping his sister put her helmet on at the start line. It was a truly impressive achievement for the young (17-years-old) driver. Personal correspondence unearthed during Richard's research reveals that Wilkie's instructions on the day were "keep your foot hard to the floor, watch the oil pressure and I will take care of the rest".

Records show that throughout the rest 1935 the car competed at races, speed trials and hill climbs across the country. Kenneth and Doreen shared the drives but Doreen grabbed all the attention, images of this charismatic young lady driver proving irresistible to the motor sport press photographers of the time. Many photographs show Wilkie next to Doreen, clearly very proud of her driving talent and his new version of the Q-Type. Hill climbs at Shelsley, Prescott,and Chalfont St Mary see the car fitted with twin rear wheels, a sign of its versatility as an established part of the Bellevue stable.

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At the end of the 1935 season the MG was put up for sale for £495. The Q-Type with its Zoller blower was not an easy car to maintain, and the chassis had problems on bumpy tracks like Brooklands in transferring all that power to the ground. Photos show very scrubbed tyres, the result of violent wheelspin as this very light car would take off in rough sections.

Rather than sell the Q-Type, Bellevue Garage hired the car out to Robin Hanson, the fee apparently £25 per day plus breakages. The MG was purchased by his sponsor, a Miss Hall Smith, and Hanson drove the car in the Locke King Trophy at Brooklands. This was followed by a series of sand races at Southport. The car's new livery was blue and black.

In 1937 the Q-Type was purchased by Mrs C Corbett Fisher, a wealthy philanthropist and women's rights campaigner. She sponsored Stuart Wilton to drive at speed trials at Lewes and Brighton, as well as circuit races at Crystal Palace and Brooklands. In 1939 the car was offered for sale for £195. The next owner of note does not appear until 1947 in the shape of Jim Lafone. Jim, a passionate field sportsman and amateur racing driver from Cumbria, campaigned the MG very successfully at speed trials in Hartlepool, Weston-super-Mare and Southport. Having lost part of his arm as a fighter pilot during the war, he found the ENV pre-selector gearbox a boon.

With the gear change swapped to the outside of the cockpit, Jim was able to drive competitively. He raced the MG until 1951, and it is at this point in the car's history that it sadly loses its engine and gearbox, which were incorporated into a Lotus VI.

Tom Norton, driving under the alias 'T Dryver' because his father disapproved of him racing, campaigned the car with a replacement Gypsy Major aircraft engine installed, a brute of a power plant displacing a staggering 6,124cc. (With a distinct lack of modern racing cars available post-war, individuals were desperate to improve the performance and handling of what remained of the surviving pre-war cars.) Tom, with the aero engine installed in the narrow Q-Type chassis, raced the car at the Shelsley Walsh and Rest-and-be-Thankful hill climbs but with little success. In 1955, he tried to improve the handling by removing the MG front axle and grafting on a Morris Minor front end.

Some very 'homespun' bodywork was fitted and in this form the car was known as the 'ATN de Havilland Special'. When it was broken up around 1957 the Q-Type's original tail section ended up on the hill climb special 'Wasp', still actively campaigned to this day. The chassis, now minus its aero engine, passed through various hands before ending up in the ownership of Colin Clifford, a Riley parts dealer. The car was purchased by Julian Majzub together with a quantity of Riley spares.

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In the late 1990s, Tom Dark, a highly competent engineer and MG specialist, had embarked on making a faithful replica of the Evans car, unaware of the existence of the original parts. It was not until a chance conversation at Goodwood with keen Vintage racer and owner of the Blockley tyre company, Julian Majzub, that it transpired that the original chassis was hidden away in his mother's barn. In 2009 the car was validated by Peter Green of the Pre-war MG Register, as the very distinctive narrowed Q-Type chassis of QA0254. Sadly it was minus the dumb irons that had been removed to accommodate the aero engine, but nevertheless sufficient to convince Peter that it was the last of the eight Q-Types to be accounted for.

Tom Dark set about incorporating the original chassis into his faithful copy, and later acquired the car's original bonnet, which clearly bears the scars of the aero engine exhaust apertures that were once cut so crudely into the aluminium. The car could now compete at the Goodwood Revival and is listed in the programme of 2007. It was clocked at 148 mph, now reunited with an authentic P-Type engine and Zoller supercharger.

Having retired from the race at Goodwood in 2008, Tom moved on to other projects and the MG was sold to Steve Richardson, who kept the car in storage for two years until he decided to move it on. Richard Powell first saw the Q-Type, looking a little forlorn, at the Montlhéry Revival in early 2019. Having knowledge of the Evans family cars from his research into the Syston Park Speed Trials, he could not quite believe what he was seeing in a very muddy field in France.

Richard brought the car to his workshop in August 2019 and worked on it relentlessly, rebuilding the engine that had not run since 2008. Being an architectural metalworker by profession, he was able to refashion some of the non-original bodywork to be closer to that fitted in period, as seen in the many historical photographs of the car. In the course of his researches Richard accumulated a vast amount of such photographs, and with the generous help of fellow MG enthusiasts, he acquired copies of letters from Kenneth and Doreen Evans (see accompanying history files). Hawke's MMM Register provides the full details of the car's provenance.

In 2021 the completed Q-Type was driven at Cadwell, Prescott and Donington Park by Jack Bond (although not listed among the competitors). Despite missing the practice run the car came from the back of the grid to achieve a respectable 5th place in a field of 23.

An exceptionally rare car with a fascinating history, and a most unlikely survivor, this historic MG racer will surely delight the fortunate next owner.

https://cars.bonhams.com/auction/27998/lot/218/1934-mg-q-type-monoposto-chassis-no-qa-0254/