MG T-Series values: TC over TF over TD, the Tickford premium, and a market that has halved

The T-Series is the MG that carried the marque across the war and into America, and MG T-Series values are spread across five cars and twenty years: 1,451 recorded sales since 1994, about 130 a year lately, at a median of £16,700, with the middle half between £12,100 and £22,100. Three-quarters of the cars offered find a buyer. The spread runs from a £770 project to £346,000 for one exceptional TC with a story, and most of the record is a restored TD or TC in North America, where the great majority of the post-war cars were delivered new.

The MG T-Series model guide covers the TA, TB, TC, TD and TF, what each is like and what to check. This page is about the money, and about a market that runs against the calendar.

TC over TF over TD

The variant table on this page shows an order that has nothing to do with age. The TC of 1945 to 1949, the first post-war MG and the car that taught America what a sports car was, leads at a median of £21,200 across 296 sales. The TF of 1953 to 1955, the last and prettiest T-type with its faired-in headlamps, sits second at £19,100 across 343, with the 1,500cc cars of 1954 to 1955 a little above the 1,250s. The pre-war TA of 1936 to 1939 is next at £18,300. And the TD of 1950 to 1953, the most numerous T-type by far and the one with the widest chassis, the independent front suspension and the disc wheels, is the cheapest, at £13,500 across 638 sales.

The reasons are the usual ones. The TC is the purest of the line, with its 19-inch wire wheels, its narrow pre-war body and its cable brakes, and it is the car the enthusiasts picture; the TD was built in three times the numbers, four in five of them for the United States, and looks, to many eyes, like a TC that has put on weight. The market pays for rarity and for the look, and the TD, the best of the T-types to drive, is the bargain of the range. Above all of them are the coachbuilt and rare cars: the Tickford-bodied TA drophead coupé at £49,700 across 15 sales, the TB of 1939, of which only 379 were built, at £39,600 across six, and the occasional car with competition or celebrity history, one of which, a TC sold in America in 2015 for £346,000, tops the record and describes nothing but itself.

What moves the price of a T-type

The wood. Every T-type is a steel-panelled body over an ash frame, and the frame rots at the door pillars, the sills, the scuttle and the rear quarters, taking the door fit and the panel gaps with it. A car with sound wood, doors that shut and gaps that line up sits in the upper half of its range; a car with soft pillars is a reframe job, which costs more than most T-types are worth, whatever the paint looks like. The chassis rusts at the rear spring hangers and the battery box, and the mechanical parts, simple and well supported by the specialists, move the price least.

Originality matters more on a T-type than on any later MG. The correct engine, the original wheels, the right instruments and a period colour all add; a TD on wire wheels, of which there are many, sells as a TD whatever it looks like; a supercharger or a later XPAG engine needs its paperwork. A Heritage certificate confirming the car’s original market, colour and engine is the start of any serious price, and because most post-war T-types went abroad, a genuine home-market right-hand-drive car sells at a premium in Britain of perhaps ten to twenty per cent, with a converted car between. Mileage, on a car that has been restored at least once in seventy years, means nothing.

Half the value it had in 2016

The chart shows the T-Series riding the 2010s boom and giving it all back. The yearly median was £13,500 in 2008, £18,800 in 2010, £21,500 in 2016, the peak, and then £18,000 to £19,400 through the pandemic years before falling to £14,000 in 2024 and £13,400 in 2025, with the 2026 figure so far below £12,000. Restated in today’s money, the T-Series has lost about half its value since 2016 and a third since 2020.

The sample has changed, with the online auctions bringing more ordinary TDs into the record, but the larger cause is the one the MGA, the Big Healey and the XK120 share: the T-type is a pre-war and 1950s sports car, and the generation that wanted one because they remembered it is leaving the market faster than a new one arrives. The TCs and the coachbuilt cars have held up best, the ordinary TDs least, and a sound TD is now cheaper in real terms than it has been in twenty years. For a buyer who wants a pre-war driving experience for modern hatchback money, that is the case for it.

Where T-types change hands

The record is mostly North American, through the online platforms, and a single week in August 2026 shows the spread there: TFs at £2,600, £13,200 and £27,300 and a TD replica at £5,100, with a TD at £8,400 at a Midlands sale room in Britain. The home-market right-hand-drive cars and the coachbuilt TAs mostly pass through the MG clubs and the specialists at prices a little above the auction 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 TC or TF belongs in the upper half of its range and a TD around its median; the Tickfords and the TB are insured on their own figures. On restoration the arithmetic turns on the wood: a reframe and retrim costs more than a standard T-type is worth, so a project with soft pillars is for the home restorer, and the right buy is the car with the work already done. If you are selling, the spring is the season, the Heritage certificate and a photograph of the door gaps are what move the price, and the median for the type is the honest expectation.

Related

The T-Series sits between the pre-war Midgets that came before it and the MGA that replaced it, which sells for a little more; its rivals in period, the Morgan 4/4 and the Triumph TR2, bracket it in price. For how all the figures on this site are compiled, see what classic cars sell for.