Engineer turned part-time detective tracks down and restores prized 1953 MG TD

It would be difficult to believe that a car manufactured in 1953 has fewer than 900kms on the clock, but this is the case for Ballito’s rarely seen 1953 MG TD.

Owner Peter Banks is a retired civil and structural engineer and his car is his most prized possession.

So much so that it rarely leaves his garage.

Banks first heard a whisper about the car from a consultant in Swaziland, who told him that during his schooldays in Swaziland in 1982, a teacher with a passion for aerial photography would arrive at school in a beautiful sports car.

From the description, Banks believed it to be an MG.

“After Eddie left my office I pondered the fate of this car. It was well known how vehicles were abandoned in Kenya and Northern Rhodesia during the upheavals there. Later the same would happen in Southern Rhodesia.”

But Banks was hopeful that the MG would have returned to South Africa after Swaziland’s independence and that the car might be found in some barn or shed.

Determined to find the car, Banks went on a 7-month long detective trail, searching for breadcrumbs by combing teachers’ registrations, telephone records and photography societies until eventually, the name of a Mr De Haan surfaced.

But it would be a further 2 months before Banks’ efforts were to pay off. 

By chance, when visiting a large consulting company in Rosebank, he noticed an aerial photograph of the Matola Refinery in Mozambique.

On a whim he tracked down the name of the photographer, and lo and behold it was the elusive Mr De Haan.

He had struck gold. 

Banks discovered that De Haan had been a wartime photographer who had moved to South Africa and opened a commercial photography studio in Johannesburg.

Finally his dogged detective work paid off and the car was found in a Sandton garage, stripped down and for sale.

De Haan’s son turned out to be the teacher from Swaziland.

Banks bought it for R4 000 and started a 34-year-long restoration effort to return the neglected vehicle to its former glory.

From being involved in an accident, to having missing and damaged parts, the vehicle posed a challenge.

But Banks’ desire to see the MG TD restored outweighed all of this.

Only able to work on the car over weekends and at night, he saw the MG TD fully restored in 2018.

The right-hand-drive car may be one of only 345 models ever to be sent to South Africa.

However, Peter suspects that the car may have been brought in from one of the former colonial countries, Kenya, Northern Rhodesia (Zambia) or Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) to which the United Kingdom exported. 

Banks has meticulously recorded the car’s history but the first 15 years of its life remain a mystery.

“The lack of information would lead one to assume it was brought down from up north when the winds of change wracked the colonial empire,” adding that he still hopes to fill in the blanks of the car’s history.