Hi John, Gunter

The ZBV,s according to MG Saloon Cars by Clausager on page 185 some of the single colour cars did not have the dividing strip, the sunroofs were factory fitted on a few later cars, how this was done is not clear.

There were some specific variations carried out on the production cars at this time according to customer requests, Mike Elman-Brown had a MGA twin Cam built several months after production had finished.

Some of the ZA/ZB's had very special colours again laid out on page 185 of the above book, My car was Kashmir/maroon from new , chassis number 32690 so it is quite a late car, only about 200 cars seem to have been in this colour combo.

I suppose production was very low volumes during the 1950's and early 1960's
Trevor

Hi John,

I've never heard of Varitones without the chrome trim. All factory single colour Varitones I came across had the chrome trim.
Concerning the roof I also never heard of factory sun roofs. But I know a car in Luxembourg that has a sliding roof fitted from new. I guess there were companies arounf at the time, who did the job.
Does anybody know more?
Günter

Last week fellow Magnette owner Dave Newland and myself went to visit a new Magnette owner who was seeking advice about his car. His car is a two tone blue, large rear windscreen varitone, but we pointed out to him that the chrome body line/colour separation strip was missing. On closely checking inside the boot, there was no evidence of any holes for the clips, or any evidence that the holes had been very well filled. Were any Varitones produced without the chrome strip? I will be checking out the paint code to see if this was originally just a large rear windowed single colour ZB. I am unable to check if it had the Chrome trim on the wings and the doors only, and whether or not the holes had been filled.
Also the car had an excellent sun roof that slid back inside the roof lining, with a wind deflector at the front which was either factory fitted at manufacture, or whoever did fit it made a really excellent job.
Has anybody any ideas to contribute?
John Barringer