HRG Derrington Headed MGA Discovered – by Stuart Mumby

Serendipity. Every once in a while a happy discovery is made, just by chance. Irene and I were strolling along the riverside path in the historic city of York recently and we passed a large house, one that we have walked by many times and mounted on the roof of which is a weather vane (wind direction indicator) in the shape of an MGA.

Each time we have walked by I have said that one day I will knock on the door and ask the owners if they actually have an MGA. Well, this time I did, announcing myself as the Chairman of the MGA Register.

The gentleman of the house did, indeed have an MGA, or rather his wife did. And what’s more he would open up his garage for us to see. What he revealed was no ordinary MGA. The car, a 1600 Mk2 Roadster, has been in his wife’s ownership since 1982. In 1979 it was fitted with a genuine HRG Derrington cross-flow head and twin webers. The owner allowed me to take some pictures of the installation and these are reproduced with this article. As can be seen, the inlet manifolds have the Derrington name cast into them and the valve cover has the HRG Engineering name-plate attached. The car is also fitted with a close-ratio gearbox. It is very rare to see a Derrington equipped road going MGA in the UK, though the firm of Brown & Gammons were marketing a similar reproduction item and Moss sell a cross-flow head of their own design. A brief Google search shows a healthy interest in the original Derrington heads in the USA.

My first MGA was a standard 1600 Roadster which I sold in 1998 to fulfil the dream of owning a Morgan. Unfortunately, though the car was a beautiful specimen we could not get along together. When I later visited the new owner of my original MGA he had fitted an genuine Derrington head which he had acquired from a friend in the trade.