Rubber-bumper MGBs like this 1979 car are often assumed to be the last MGBs built, though the real final year was actually 1980. The bumpers added over 100 pounds to meet American crash standards and initially hurt handling that a factory fix later helped restore. Here is what changed under those controversial bumpers, and what did not.
The MGB is manufactured by the British Motor Corporation from the start, but later by British Leyland, from 1962 through 1980. The MGB is a totally redesigned version of the MGA, its predecessor. The newer model will do 0-60 mph (97km/h) in eleven plus seconds and shares few components with the earlier model. The unibody “B” type MG features ‘crumple zones” to protect the occupants from a 30 mph (48 km/h) collision with an immovable barrier and this is a first for the American market place.
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Most people assume 1979 marked the end of the road for the MGB, and it is easy to see why given how close that guess actually is. The car pictured here wears the rubber bumpers that became a lightning rod among MG enthusiasts, bumpers that were never just a styling change but a direct response to American crash regulations. Getting them approved for the US market meant adding weight the original MGB was never designed to carry, and it changed the way the car drove in ways that took factory engineers years to fully correct. The real final year turns out to be one model year later than most people guess.
Not Quite the Final Year, but Close
The MGB actually remained in production until October 22, 1980, meaning this 1979 car was built during the second-to-last model year rather than the very last one, even though rubber-bumper MGBs are commonly associated with the end of the line as a group.
The Rubber Bumpers Everyone Loves to Hate
Those bumpers, molded from a polyurethane material known commercially as Bayflex, were engineered to absorb a 5 mph impact without deforming in order to meet American safety requirements, but they added more than 100 pounds to the car and required reinforcing the mounting structure at both the front bumper and rear body side members just to carry the extra weight.
The 1975 introduction of these bumpers also raised the MGB ride height by 1.5 inches to meet bumper-height regulations, which hurt the handling that had made the earlier chrome-bumper cars so well regarded. Factory engineers addressed part of that by making a rear anti-roll bar standard equipment starting in 1977, restoring some of the sharpness the raised suspension had cost.
The 1979 Powertrain: Modest Numbers, Same Simple Formula
By 1979, the four-cylinder engine was rated at 62.5 horsepower and 88 lb-ft of torque paired with a 4-speed manual and overdrive, modest numbers that still delivered the same fundamentally simple sports car experience MG had been selling since 1962.
Nearly Two Decades on One Basic Formula
The MGB’s production run stretched from 1962 all the way to that October 1980 end date, nearly eighteen years on essentially the same basic platform and mechanical formula, an extraordinarily long run for any sports car of the era. Very few direct competitors from the early 1960s were still in production, let alone still selling in meaningful volume, by the time the last MGB rolled off the line, which says something about how well MG’s original engineering held up even as the market around it changed dramatically.
The GT Variant Most People Forget Existed
Alongside the roadster body style that most people picture when they hear “MGB,” MG also built a fixed-roof GT variant starting in 1965, giving buyers a more practical, weatherproof version of the same basic car without sacrificing much of the driving experience. The GT never outsold the roadster, but it carved out its own loyal following among buyers who wanted MGB ownership without committing to a soft top, and clean GT examples remain a genuinely underappreciated corner of the MGB collector market today.
British Leyland’s Shadow Over the Late-Production Cars
By the time this 1979 car was built, the MGB was operating under British Leyland’s ownership, a nationalized conglomerate formed in 1968 that struggled through the 1970s with labor disputes, inconsistent quality control, and chronic underinvestment across its various brands. That corporate turmoil is a big part of why enthusiasts often view late-production rubber-bumper MGBs, this one included, with more skepticism than the earlier chrome-bumper cars, even when the underlying engineering changes were made with genuinely good intentions.
One of the Best-Selling Sports Cars Ever Built
Across its entire production run, MG built well over 500,000 examples of the MGB in both roadster and GT form, making it one of the best-selling sports cars in automotive history and comfortably the most successful model MG ever produced. That volume is exactly why parts support and enthusiast community knowledge remain so strong today, decades after the last one left the factory — there are simply more MGBs, and more people who know how to fix them, than almost any classic British sports car on the road.
Why Chrome-Bumper Cars Command a Premium Today
Early chrome-bumper MGBs, built before the 1975 federal bumper regulations forced the switch to the rubber units this car wears, consistently command a real premium in the collector market over comparable rubber-bumper cars, largely because enthusiasts view the pre-1975 cars as lighter, better-handling, and more visually faithful to MG’s original design intent. That price gap has narrowed somewhat as more buyers come to appreciate the added crash protection and refined anti-roll bar tuning the later cars offered, but it hasn’t disappeared.
A Simple Formula That Refused to Age Out
What kept the MGB relevant for nearly two decades wasn’t dramatic reinvention — it was a genuinely simple, honest sports car formula that MG refined incrementally rather than replaced outright, even as safety and emissions regulations forced real engineering changes along the way. That’s exactly the car this 1979 example represents: not the purest version of the formula, but proof that the formula itself was strong enough to survive nearly two decades of a rapidly changing automotive world. Enthusiast clubs and parts suppliers dedicated specifically to the MGB remain active today, a level of ongoing support few sports cars from this era can still claim.
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