MG B "Jacques Coune"

Extra information

Something fine from Brussels
 
In the mid-1950s the workshop of the back-then 30-years-old Jacques Coune was located at the Avenue de la Couronne in Brussels. Within the next years he built up reputation in the automotive scene with the participation in numerous races, the trade in high-priced British cars and with the agencies of the brand Abarth and Iso. But his real passion was the realization of his ideas in form of own car bodies.

 

His company was necessarily equipped and in 1963 he attended to the substructure of a MG B Roadster of which he wanted to mold an coupé car body. Already in January 1964 he finished his work and presented his design to the public. His design proved to be quite popular. Due to this success Jacques Coune decided to produce the car in small series. The British technique of the car remained mostly the same, only its chassis got strengthened. Visually the car got an completely new silhouette. For financial reasons he used numerous parts of existing cars. The lights came from the Simca 1000 and both the front as well as the rear window came from the Renault 8. Compared with the Roadster the Coupé was more than 50 kg lighter and was therefore able to accelerate to a top speed of 180 km/h. All this also went through to the management of MG, nevertheless an cooperation with the Belgian did not happen. Beyond test drives there was no concession on the side of MG. However, it is recorded that the Brits commented the Belgian design as “… too Italian”. This Italian look also could not help to sell the car in higher production volumes. Only two years later the small production of the coupé in Brussels was ceased after exact 56 copies.

 

Beside the MG Coune also attended to the conversion of other standard cars. Among others he designed car bodies for cars of Mercedes-Benz, Volvo and BMW.