MG Midget values: the cheapest MG sports car, chrome over rubber, and a market back where it started
What the Midget sells for at auction
In 2025 the median Midget sold for £4,200 across 86 sales, 8% down on 2024. In real terms, typical Midget prices were down about 46% over the five years to 2025, once inflation is accounted for.
| Variant | Sold | Typical range | Median |
|---|---|---|---|
| Midget Mk III | 294 | £3,400 - £7,500 | £5,124 |
| Midget 1500 | 290 | £2,505 - £5,998 | £3,656 |
| Midget Mk II | 37 | £4,384 - £8,550 | £5,721 |
| Midget Mk I | 23 | £5,220 - £7,900 | £5,850 |
Show the year-by-year mediansHide the year-by-year medians
| Year | Sold | Median | In 2025 money |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 (so far) | 56 | £4,014 | |
| 2025 | 86 | £4,200 | £4,200 |
| 2024 | 77 | £4,574 | £4,750 |
| 2023 | 68 | £5,188 | £5,567 |
| 2022 | 72 | £5,278 | £6,045 |
| 2021 | 73 | £4,892 | £6,049 |
| 2020 | 50 | £6,172 | £7,821 |
| 2019 | 35 | £6,000 | £7,681 |
| 2018 | 27 | £6,000 | £7,811 |
| 2017 | 29 | £4,710 | £6,274 |
| 2016 | 30 | £3,800 | £5,192 |
| 2015 | 20 | £4,267 | £5,888 |
| 2014 | 15 | £4,302 | £5,961 |
| 2013 | 10 | £2,766 | £3,888 |
| 2012 | 5 | £2,659 | £3,822 |
| 2011 | 11 | £2,700 | £3,981 |
| 2010 | 6 | £3,185 | £4,878 |
| 2008 | 4 | £2,662 | £4,262 |
| 2006 | 6 | £1,997 | £3,386 |
| 2005 | 5 | £2,025 | £3,520 |
| 2004 | 4 | £2,531 | £4,489 |
- £3,248Midget 1500
- £4,480Midget Mk III
- £4,674Midget Mk III
- £6,500Midget Mk III
- £10,000Midget Mk III
Strong evidence. 693 recorded sales and a dozen or more a year: the median and the range are well founded. Based on 693 sold results from public classic car auctions (1995 to 10 August 2026). Sold prices, not asking prices, and not a valuation: condition, history and specification vary from car to car. Inflation-adjusted figures use the ONS CPIH index, in 2025 money.
The Midget is the cheapest MG sports car and the cheapest way into the marque, and MG Midget values are among the lowest and best-documented on this site: 693 recorded sales since 1995, about 75 a year lately, at a median of £4,600, with the middle half between £3,000 and £7,000. Four in five of the cars offered find a buyer, the highest rate of any MG in the database, because a Midget is estimated honestly and bought for what it is. The spread runs from a £230 project to £28,750 for one exceptional car, and nothing else in the record has passed £20,000.
The MG Midget model guide covers the four marks, the engines, the chrome and rubber bumpers and what to check. This page is about the money, and about a market that has come back to where it started.
Chrome over rubber, and the early cars on top
The variant table on this page runs in the order the clubs would predict. The earliest cars lead: the Mk I of 1961 to 1964, with the 948cc and then the 1,098cc A-series, has a median of £5,850 across 23 recorded sales, and the Mk II of 1964 to 1966, with wind-up windows and the semi-elliptic rear springs, £5,700 across 37. The Mk III of 1966 to 1974, the 1,275cc chrome-bumper car that is most people’s Midget, sits at £5,100 across 294 sales. And the 1500 of 1974 to 1979, with the Triumph engine, the raised ride height and the black bumpers that the American regulations brought, is the cheapest at £3,700 across 290.
The gap between chrome and rubber is about two-fifths at the median and wider at the top, where the best restored Mk IIIs reach £10,000 to £14,000 and the best 1500s rarely pass £8,000. It is a smaller gap than the folklore says, because the 1500 is the better-equipped and slightly quicker car and a sound one is the cheapest usable MG sports car there is. The early cars’ premium is modest at the median and larger at the top, where a restored Mk I with its original engine is a rarer thing than a restored Mk III; with 60 sales between them the early-car figures move with every good example that comes to market.
What moves the price of a Midget
The body, first and last. A Midget’s running gear is cheap, simple and available from the specialists by return, and the shell is where the money goes: the sills, which are structural, the floors, the rear spring hangers, the A-posts, the front inner wings and the boot floor all rot, and a car that has had them properly replaced, with the receipts, sits in the upper half of its range whatever the paint. A car with filler in its sills is a project at any price, because a full shell restoration costs more than any Midget is worth.
Then what the car is. Originality matters more than on most cheap classics: a Mk I with its 948 or 1,098, a Mk III with its 1,275 and its chrome, wire wheels, a factory hardtop and a period colour all add, and a 1500 that has been converted to chrome bumpers and lowered is worth less than an honest one, because the conversion is obvious and the car is neither thing. A long history file and an owners’ club background add a little; a Midget that has been raced or rallied sells on its paperwork. Mileage barely registers on a car that has usually been restored at least once.
Back where it started
The chart shows a car that rose late and fell early. The yearly median sat between £2,000 and £3,200 from 2004 to 2013, rose to £4,300 in 2014, and reached £6,000 in 2018, 2019 and 2020, the peak; since then it has fallen, to £4,900 in 2021, £5,300 in 2022, £5,200 in 2023, £4,600 in 2024 and £4,200 in 2025, with the 2026 figure so far a little lower. Restated in today’s money the Midget has lost nearly half its value since 2020 and is worth less than it was in 2014.
Part of that is the sample: the online auctions have brought the ordinary and the unloved Midget into the record in numbers the catalogued sales never did, and a median built on those is a lower figure for the same cars. Part is the market: a small 1960s sports car with a 1,275cc engine is bought by people who remember them, and the generation that does is leaving. The chrome-bumper cars have held up better than the 1500s, which have fallen furthest, and the result is that a Midget today is the cheapest real sports car in the British record, cheaper than a Spitfire and far cheaper than the same car with a Healey badge.
Where Midgets change hands
The Midget is a British car in a British record. The regional sale rooms, from Yorkshire to the south-west, and the online platforms trade them in roughly equal numbers, and a single week at the end of July 2026 shows the whole range: Mk IIIs at £6,500 and £10,000 at a Yorkshire sale, another at £4,500 and a 1500 at £3,250 at a Herefordshire sale, and a Mk III at £4,700 on an American online platform. The best cars and the early cars tend to pass through the MG specialists and the clubs rather than the auctions, at prices a little above the recorded range. Whether a recorded price includes the buyer’s premium varies by sale, which is one more reason to read the usual range rather than any single result.
Insuring, restoring, selling
For an agreed-value policy a good chrome-bumper car belongs around its median and a restored one in the upper half of the range; a 1500 sits at its own figure, and a Mk I with history is insured on the car. On restoration the arithmetic is blunt: a professional shell restoration costs more than any Midget is worth, so the project is for the owner who wants to do the work, and the sensible buy is the car someone else has finished, which at today’s prices costs less than the parts. If you are selling, the spring is the season, the photographs that sell a Midget are of the sills and the floors, and the honest expectation for an ordinary Mk III is its median, not the figure a restored one made in 2019.
Related
The Midget is the same car as the Austin-Healey Sprite, which sells for more than twice as much because the Frogeye leads that record; its rival in period was the Triumph Spitfire, which sells for a little more, and its bigger brother the MGB, which sells for half as much again. For the decade, see British classic cars of the 1960s. For how all the figures on this site are compiled, see what classic cars sell for.
