About the MG TABC Group

The T-ABC Group can be considered a “car club”, but as an online community we do not have meetings, dues or events. We see each other face to face only on the occasions that a few of us meet at some MG function.

The group began in March of 1998 when several TC owners began exchanging information via email. Over the next few weeks, word of the group spread. As others joined, it was expanded to include TA and TB owners as well. With about two dozen people now communicating, Walter Prechsl created a website to showcase technical articles and photos shared by various members.

By the next year, membership in the group had grown to the point that communication became difficult. Walter set up an email exchange through a server at his business which allowed a message to be sent to a single email address and reach all members of the group at once.  The server was soon overwhelmed so in November 1999 it was moved to eGroups with Jim Shade managing the communication side of things.  eGroups was purchased by Yahoo Groups in August 2000, and continued as the group’s method of communication, with Walter’s website being used for photos.

The T-ABC website he created originally included a gallery where members could submit photos and information about themselves and their cars. The site grew to include Parts Suppliers, Technical Articles, Special Files, Classified Ads, etc.

The next milestone came when someone suggested a car badge. A design contest was held, members voted, and the design created by Austin Baer was selected. Embroidered patches with the same design came soon after.

Yahoo Groups later added a photo storage area which was utilized by Jim as a supplement to the email list. With the Yahoo gallery activated, we could now post our own files and photos to the Yahoo site which made things easier on Walter. TABC member David Edgar had also been brought on board to take some of the workload off of Jim, who was until then managing the Yahoo Group side of things on his own.

By the group’s 10th anniversary in 2008, we had 863 member in about 27 countries, with 300 badges and 100 patches sold. In 2009, member Steve Simmons also volunteered to help with the administration of the email list.

In 2012, Walter transferred ownership and care of the MG-TABC web site to Steve who over the next several months re-vamped the site and added a dedicated discussion forum. Later that year Russ Wilson came on board to handle regalia sales and the group treasury.  He also updated the club badge and had a new run produced with better color and detail.  The new revamped site went live in January of 2013.  Development of the site continues today with input from its members, the MG-TABC community.

In 2016 we lost Jim Shade (RIP), and for the next year David and Steve kept things going with David concentrating on keeping the aging Yahoo Groups format running and Steve updating the website and administering the Discussion Forum.  With Jim gone, the member lists which he had maintained manually were put aside for a future volunteer to update.

In 2017, three new moderators were added.  Tom Wilson, Michael Stokes and Bill Harte stepped up to help keep the email list running smoothly.  Then in 2019, Yahoo announced it would shut down most of its features by year’s end, so a move was made to Groups.io which proved to be far more modern and user-friendly than Yahoo ever was.

When our Yahoo group was finally shut down, we had nearly 93,000 messages , 1800 attachments and 1,335 members.  These messages are being archived and will be available for viewing in the near future.  Hopefully in we can add to those by reaching another 100,000 messages on the Groups.io list!

Now that you know a little more about us, we hope you join our group to help promote these cars, and ensure they remain for generations to come!

The Team:

Steve Simmons
Server Admin / Webmaster
Discussion Forum Administrator
Email List Moderator

Michael Stokes
Primary Email List Administrator

Tom Wilson
Email List Co-Administrator

Bill Harte
Email List Moderator

Russ Wilson
Treasurer
Regalia Design / Sales

Walter Prechsl
Founder and Ex-Officio

Membership Registrar
Currently Open, looking for volunteers

Skilled web designer also sought to help with re-design and maintenance of existing web site.