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A Brief History

By Tom Bowman

A brief account of the origins of the MG Car Club—Florida first appeared many years ago in a small book titled "MG Car Club: The First Seventy Years", covering a very large number of MG clubs around the world. Of particular interest to us was the following statement:

"The M.G. Car Club Florida was the first MG car club to be formed in Florida and is still active today. It was organized in Jacksonville Florida in 1956. It was known then as the Florida MG Touring Club Ltd. but at the same time was designated as the Florida Center of the M.G. Car Club."

In the years that followed there were huge changes in the MG world as well as the outside world. The Brits in their wisdom(?) stopped making and selling MGs and they became orphans. Our coveted old MGs became more popular, sought after and cherished than ever before!

Here in Brevard County, driving to our "local" MG club (the Classic MG Club in Orlando) for their monthly meetings had become less appealing and more difficult due to the ever increasing traffic, tolls and congestion in Central Florida. This inevitably to a movement spearheaded by Jerry Keuper, to start our own MG club in 1989 that would cater to the needs and interests of MG owners on this stretch of Florida's East Coast. Dr. Jerry Keuper, the Founding President of Florida Institute of Technology, was an MG enthusiast who had moved to Florida in an MGTD in the early 1950s to work in the space program. Shortly thereafter he started a night school for engineers and technicians who were also working in the space program. By the time he retired in the early 1990s, Florida Tech had attained a global reputation for the excellence of its programs in science, engineering and many other fields.

Jerry had by then become one of the better known figures in the MG world, traveling to major MG events in Europe, South Africa, and elsewhere, and founding in 1989 the "North American MMM Register". That group continues today to actively organize and promote the restoration and racing in this country of the overhead cam MGs that were produced from 1929 to 1936. Their current Membership Directory states their group was created 21 years ago by Jerry Keuper to provide a means of communication among owners of MMM cars (MG Midgets, Magnas and Magnettes).

Jerry Keuper never lost his focus on Brevard County Florida or his desire to see a strong resurgence in MG-related activity here, and to that end he took it upon himself to track down what had become of the MG Car Club Florida listed in the "MG Car Club" book referenced above. He learned that it was gone but not forgotten, the records of that club still existed, and they were in the hands of Bill McQuaid in Jacksonville, a fellow enthusiast known to us all and a leader in the Jacksonville branch or the club for many, many years. Jerry drove to Jacksonville to pick up the records Bill had kept and bring them back to Melbourne, and we have been calling ourselves the MG Car Club—Florida ever since.