Cecil Kimber was born on April 12, 1888, six years before the birth of the British automobile industry and, although they grew side by side, it was only later that their paths would cross.
Without a formal engineering education, Cecil Kimber showed an early aptitude for mechanics. His first motorcycle, a Rex 33 from 1906, bought second-hand, was completely dismantled and rebuilt again. That's how he started to develop the idea of modifying the original models to sell them later on.
His idea of modifying the original models began to develop here, selling them next.
It was also motorcycles that brought Cecil Kimber to the world of automobiles. In fact, it was with the money from the compensation of a serious motorcycle accident that the young Kimber bought his first car, a Singer 10 from 1912.
In 1921 Cecil Kimber started working at the Morris Garages, owned by William Morris, later Lord Nuffield, one of the greatest icons of the automotive industry of his time.
Beginning with a bicycle workshop at his mother's house, William Morris quickly started selling cars and, in 1910, founded the Morris Garages in Oxford where three years later he built his first car.
Morris's philosophy was based on building cars by assembling their with various components purchased from other suppliers what allowed him to offer models at extremely competitive prices.
This was also the philosophy of Cecil Kimber who moved forward with the creation of sport versions of standard models giving rise to the MG brand over the first three years (1921-1924).
Then began a frantic period of development of models for competition in parallel with standard models that ended in 1939 with the beginning of the Second World War.
Cecil Kimber ordered production to stop in Abingdon and the MG No 22,500 was the last car that he saw produced.
Abingdon would go on to produce military equipment and Cecil Kimber would die in a train accident in 1945, nine weeks before his 75th birthday.
Fortunately, the brand he imagined would remain alive.
MG ROVER PORTUGAL
Public relations
April 2004
