As one of three factory team cars prepared for 1934 under the guidance of MG grandee Captain George Eyston, chassis number K3020 was first registered with the Abingdon mark “JB 4184”. The car made its race debut in the International Trophy at Brooklands on 28 April 1934. Driving duties were assigned to Clifton Penn-Hughes, who only three weeks earlier had finished 2nd in class and 11th overall in the 1934 Mille Miglia sharing another K3 with Giovanni Lurani. After almost three hours of racing, Whitney Straight’s Maserati prevailed but the K3 Magnettes dominated the smaller capacity Class 2, with Penn-Hughes piloting chassis K3020 to 13th place overall and 5th in class.

Just a month later, Eyston’s team travelled to the Isle of Man for the second running of the Mannin Beg, the prestigious voiturette race held on the 3.65-mile road circuit around Douglas. There, chassis K3020 was assigned to Brooklands class winner Charlie Dodson. The former motorcycle racer finished 2nd overall behind Norman Black’s similar car, with team boss Eyston placed in 3rd. Indeed, the race had been a MG masterclass, with K3s securing six of the top seven finishing positions.

A return to Brooklands in June for the British Empire Trophy placed Penn-Hughes once more in the driving seat of chassis K3020. While Eyston himself won the race overall, Penn-Hughes endured a troubled afternoon, eventually crossing the line in 10th as the last classified finisher. However, the Surrey track’s BRDC 500 Miles race in September resulted in a marked change in fortune for the car, with new drivers Bill Everitt and Tommy Wisdom finishing 4th overall and 2nd in class.

In late-September, chassis K3020 contested the Masaryk Junior Grand Prix at the Brno circuit in Czechoslovakia. Scheduled to take place over the same weekend as the first-class Grand Prix, which attracted Works entries from manufacturers including Alfa Romeo, Auto Union, Bugatti, Maserati, and Mercedes-Benz, the car was driven by emerging talent and future Silver Arrows driver Richard Seaman, who finished the voiturette race in a respectable 5th place. To finish the year, chassis K3020 reverted to Seaman’s custody for the East London Border 100. Racing against the second-strictest handicap of the grid, the Briton was ultimate restricted to 5th place by fuel pressure problems and multiple pitstops.

The following year, chassis K3020 was entered to the Mille Miglia under the stewardship of drivers Carlo Gazzabini and “Mac Bunty”; the latter understood to have been a pseudonym of Lelio Pellegrini. Initial signs were promising, with Gazzabini leading the highly competitive 1,100-cc class early on—with an average speed of 64.62 mph recorded at the Rome control some 396.2 miles in—though regrettably the car retired with mechanical maladies between Rome and Terni.

The following year, chassis K3020 was sold to a Flight Lieutenant L R Briggs of Belfast, whose efforts with the car encompassed the 1936 Cork Grand Prix, Mannin Beg, Limerick Grand Prix, and County Down Trophy race, in which he finished 2nd overall. Thereafter, it is understood that the MG was rebodied with early-type, sloping-back coachwork in 1950, and that the car passed through the hands of several UK-based owners before being exported to the United States in 1958. In 1968, it entered the ownership of collector Gary Schonwald, who performed a complete restoration, at which point the MG was returned closer to its original specification with the fitment of a pattern-made body in the ‘Pointed Tail’ style. The New Yorker ultimately retained the car for more than 20 years.

In 1991, chassis K3020 joined the stable of prominent UK-based American enthusiast E Dean Butler, who raced the car extensively in both the US and Europe—notably including an appearance at Le Mans Classic in 2002—prior to selling it to the consigning owner in 2009. In present ownership the MG has appeared at events, including in two editions of the Mille Miglia Storica, the Thousand Mile Trial, the Alpine Trial, the 2018 South African Historic Grand Prix Festival, and last year’s Shamrock Rally. During this time, the car has been fastidiously maintained and benefitted from a cylinder head overhaul by marque specialist Amies Engineering as recently as last year.

Accompanied by factory and Mille Miglia documentation—including its original timecard from the event—chassis K3020 undoubtedly remains one of the most well-documented and historically significant of all K3s. The list of accompanying documentation is further bolstered by an expired FIA Historic Vehicle Identity Form and FIVA Identity Cards. A generous spares package includes an engine cylinder block, cylinder head, inlet manifold, supercharger, and front axle. Accomplished, exhilarating, and versatile in equal measure, the K3 remains one of British motor racing’s all-time greats. In this MG, there can be no finer example currently available.