This car, Lot 140, sold for $691,525 (£525,000), including buyer’s premium, at Bonhams Cars’ Chichester, U.K., sale, on September 7, 2024.
Let’s start with the basic assertion: the 1933 MG K3 Magnette, particularly one of the few original team racing cars, is the most important British racing car of the 1930s. Strong words, I know, but arguably true. To fully understand this assertion will require some history and context, so we should begin there.
Working-class hero
William Richard Morris started it all. Known as the Henry Ford of England, he created cars for the British middle class, and his Morris cars were very successful. Morris Garages, the original premises, were split from Morris Motors in 1919.
Cecil Kimber was born to a family of modest means but quickly showed a great mechanical aptitude combined with a love of speed and an eye for graceful design. He bounced around various jobs in the automotive business, learning the trade, before being hired as Morris Garages’ sales manager in 1921. In 1922, at the age of 34, he was named general manager of Morris Garages. The primary business was selling new Morris cars and taking care of the students and faculty at Oxford University, who tended to be young, well-heeled and enthusiastic.
Not content with simply administering the garage, Cecil and his wife, Rene, took to designing and building special, sporting bodywork that could be fit onto the rather pedestrian Morris “Oxford” sedans being produced by the sister company. It was so well received that the revised cars sold for a one-third premium over the sedan, and in 1927 a separate factory was constructed to build them. By 1930 the MG Car Company Ltd. had become an official entity, still part of the WR Morris empire. Its niche was to produce and sell the sporting, exciting and faster versions of Morris cars.
Kimber proved to be a master marketer, promoting a young, exciting and fun component of the car business, and he saw racing as essential to the successful brand. By the mid-1930s, MG had become as idiomatic for “sports car” as Kodak had for camera or Hoover for vacuum cleaner. In the early ’30s, the MG product line consisted of the C (750 cc) and D (850 cc) Type Midgets, the F Type Magna (1,300 cc) and the K Type Magnette (1,100 cc). The Magnette was available as the K1 sports car, the K2 4-seater and the K3 supercharged racer.
Depression-era downsizing
We need to change topics for a moment to talk about economics and the march of technology. The early days of performance cars depended on massive displacement to achieve horsepower, but through the 1920s, technology took huge leaps that allowed power to come from smaller engines turning much higher rpm. This in turn allowed chassis to become much smaller, lighter and more nimble.
By 1930, the racing days of 6.5-liter Bentleys and 7.1-liter Mercedes SSKs were over, replaced by 2.3-liter supercharged Alfas and Bugattis as the pace setters. The Great Depression had also killed off any large-displacement production cars — little cars were all anyone could afford. Fortunately, the new smaller cars were every bit as fast.
With a total production of 31 cars (plus two prototypes) between 1933 and 1934, the K3 was not a common car, but it punched far above its weight well into the early post-war years. With a dependable 120 hp at 6,500 rpm and a preselector gearbox, relatively light weight and superb handling for its time, the K3 cut a swath in its class across both English and European races. Chassis 3003 and 3001, entered as factory cars, finished 1-2 in the 1,100-cc class at the 1933 Mille Miglia (21-22 overall, behind 19 Alfa Romeos and a Lancia), which was a huge triumph. Nuvolari was brought in for the 1933 Tourist Trophy race, where he won overall, setting a time not matched until 1950 by Stirling Moss in a Jaguar. Virtually every K3 built was extensively raced, normally with great success. It was the seminal 1930s English racer.
Bought on belief
The great irony about collecting old — particularly pre-war — racing cars is that the greatest value is directly associated with great history. Great history is associated with cars getting beat up, crashed, modified and generally treated as old weapons rather than as valued artifacts. Tiny, supercharged and high-strung, the K3 was only useful as a racer, thus having little if any value as wars ravaged Europe. Of the three original “Team” cars (3001–3003), only #3002 has survived without issues, having been shipped to Australia in 1934. Chassis 3001 appears to have been broken up in 1943, though a car claiming that number still exists. Chassis 3003, our subject, appears by one account to have been sold to Germany in 1934, where it was extensively raced until the war. M.F. Hawke’s definitive history of the K3 says that it was crashed in Germany in 1951, with no further records about its survival.
This, of course, calls into question the provenance of our subject car. As the saying goes, “it’s complicated.” This car showed up in London circa 1939, represented as “K33.” When inspected, the chassis stamping showed as “K3 . . 3”, with blanks in the middle. Nobody seems to know from whence this car came. Is it in fact s/n 3003 (in which case, what car went to Germany in 1934)? Chassis 3013 is a known car, and 3023 (EX 135) became a famous land-speed-record car, so those possibilities are out. With history back to 1939, there doesn’t appear to be much question about whether it is real. But what is it? The auction catalog cited forensic evidence through the years to support the car’s identity as chassis 3003, but as always, caveat emptor.
And equally to the point, how do you establish value? Nobody seems to know what a good, original, important K3 Magnette should be worth. The car claiming #3001 sold for $531,440 at auction in 2013 (SCM# 216615), but its provenance and value are questionable at best. There are a few pure ones in major private collections, but they are not available. Seven K3 re-creations have sold at auction in the past 35 years for between $80,00 and $200,000, but that doesn’t tell us much. A 1934 Aston Martin 1.5-liter with Le Mans history sold for over $1 million, while a 2-liter Frazer Nash TT sold for around $350,000.
The bottom line is that we are in uncharted territory. If the history and provenance were unquestioned, it should be worth at least a million dollars, and an ordinary but real K3 maybe half that. Somebody decided that this car was worth just shy of $700,000, and I will have to accept that it was a rational decision, and fairly bought. ♦
