MG 100 Ecosse

At last years Gathering of the Clans, held as always at The Scottish Antique & Arts Centre at Doune, Stirlingshire, Royston Goodman, - Central and Southern Scotland Regional Coordinator for the MG Octagon Car Club – spoke to club chairman Roger and club secretary Martyn and floated the idea for a big Scottish event in 2023 to celebrate the centenary of MG. His vision was a big event co-promoted by all of the Scottish MG Owners Clubs, probably at Doune and held in lieu of the 2023 Gathering of the Clans.

Many Zoom meetings later, all of the MG Owners Clubs in Scotland had signed up to help organise the event and the culmination of everyone’s efforts was MG 100 Ecosse which was held at Doune on 17th September.

Some of you will know that Doune is also a famous Hill Climb venue, and it was agreed that MG100 Ecosse would be held on the same weekend as a Hill Climb organised by the Lothian Car Club; this was the final hill climb of their season and was a round of the Scottish Sprint and Hillclimb Championship.

MG100 Ecosse was open to MGs of all types, sizes, ages and condition and a very healthy 250 entered for the event. Around 100 cars also entered the hill climb, which included an MG class so there were plenty of MGs to look at! This included a late appearance by the fabulous new MG Cyberster, which goes on sale in the UK next year.

This was primarily a fund-raising event and the nominated charities were SCAA, Maggies Centres, Prostate Scotland, Scottish Autism, Scout Movement, and the Lothian Car Club. Entry fees and the Raffle prize takings amounted to a magnificent £2,276 (not including the individual charity collections on the day) and this amount was apportioned between the charities.

Unfortunately, 2 of our club members had to withdraw their entries due to other commitments, but 9 members made the 2½ hour trip down to Doune for the show. Some of the more sensible folk had elected to stay in the local area the night before but for those who didn’t, it was a very early start! Unfortunately, the Scottish weather wasn’t terribly kind to us and although the day started reasonably fine, the rain came on early on Sunday afternoon, which put a bit of a dampener on proceedings. No pun intended!

Our very own speed demon John Pace had entered his MGB GT in the hill climb and he had a very good run on the Saturday, achieving a creditable 2nd in the MG class behind an MG3 race car with a time of 63.88. See the video clip below.

Some of the Sunday timed runs were held in the rain or between showers which meant the track was extremely slippery and as a result, John was unable to better his Saturday time and he ultimately finished 3rd in the class. 1st was an MG ZE with 2nd an MG Midget.

There was also a ‘fun’ judging competition for all of the MGs on display – by ‘fun’ I think it means they were looking for an overall impression about the cars rather than whether the car had the correct windscreen wipers for the year - and I was chuffed (not to mention very surprised) to get the award for the best MGB!!!

Another of our members, Carl Everard – won the award for the best MG TF so as a club, we did very well!

Despite the weather, it was a cracking event and a tribute to all the hard work that a large number of people – far too many to mention here – put in to make the day a success; it was a fine way to mark the centenary and also raised much needed funds for the nominated charities.