FROM AUSTRALIA TO ABINGDON
THE V8 ‘B’s EVOLUTION
While it’s Ken Costello who is most readily associated with the MGB’s V8 derivatives, he wasn’t actually the first person to try to endow an MGB with 3.5-litre Rover V8 power. In 1967 – the same year in which the engine debuted in the P5B – Mark Keeley, an Australian importer of US cars, fitted an earlier Oldsmobilesourced version of the engine to his own MGB, which he mated to automatic transmission. While Australian magazine Sports Car World praised the conversion, calling it ‘a genuine flyer’, it remained a one-off. Ken’s involvement with V8 ‘Bs came about two years later, when the Kent-based Mini racer and tuner spotted a spare engine at the premises of Piper Engineering, quickly realised that it could be used to create a go-faster MG with better weight distribution than the MGC then on sale, and found an MGBowning friend happy to lend him a car with which to experiment. Like the Australian creation, Costello’s conversion was based on Oldsmobile’s version of the V8 – which he believed was stronger than Buick’s, used as the basis for the later Rover engines. A second car, built that November, used a Rover P6sourced V8, with the top-mounted SU carburettors dictating the bonnet bulge now associated with the Costello-conversions. Ken promoted the converted cars by lending them to the press throughout 1971 – and it wasn’t long before British Leyland took an interest, with the manufacturer donating him a Harvest Gold ‘B GT and another P6-sourced V8 as an officiallycommissioned car. BL had experimented with its own V8engined MGBs but – according to an internal memo from chief engineer, Charles Griffin, to Lord Stokes – had concluded that the car would have to be widened by 3.5 inches to accommodate the engine. While BL’s experts were impressed with the conversion, the company’s position changed the following year, and in 1972 Autocar reported that Ken’s outfit was facing various difficulties, with supplies of V8 engines being withheld. A BL-endorsed official conversion, the MGB GT V8, was launched the following year, with a price that undercut the Costelloconverted cars. Demand eventually dried up, although Ken did briefly revisit the idea in the late 1980s with ‘Bs powered by 3.9-litre EFi V8s – again preempting MG itself, which launched the 3.9-litre RV8 in 1992.