Arnolt-MG dhc: Bertone’s saviour

By Charlie Calderwood

| 4 Dec 2025

Classic & Sports Car – Arnolt-MG dhc: British engineering, Latin style

Imagine the proposition of a 54bhp MG TD clothed in full-width Bertone bodywork and you would be right to not only be intrigued, but also expect something relatively staid to drive.

And yet, thanks to the Italian firm’s skilful and sparing use of steel and aluminium, this Arnolt cabriolet fizzes round corners and sets off with gusto like you’d never expect.

It’s not surprising that Stanley ‘Wacky’ Arnolt thought he was on to a winner when he founded his own marque to sell these beautiful, well-finished cars Stateside – and in the process saved Bertone from bankruptcy.

The Arnolt-MG dhc’s grille is in the traditional MG style, but it’s a bespoke item

Europe’s recovering economy and the move to monocoque construction created a difficult climate for Turin’s famous carrozzeria in the early 1950s.

Though best known as a design house today, the Torinese company had been, and would continue to be until the 2000s, a car builder, too.

Desperate to make some money, Nuccio Bertone – son of founder Giovanni – got hold of two MG TD chassis and built them into a cabriolet and coupé with, roofs aside, matching bodywork.

He had hoped to drum up interest and make a quick buck by selling the two cars at the 1952 Turin Salon, but instead he was approached by a Stetson-wearing Arnolt.

‘You feel very much inside the Arnolt-MG, whereas piloting a TD is to be perched on top of the car’

Pockets stuffed by the success of his marine engine business that made hay supplying the US Navy during WW2, Arnolt was also a noted fan of British marques, establishing his own dealership in Chicago to sell the country’s cars in 1950 and soon becoming the biggest British Motor Corporation dealer in the Midwest.

His MG TC was a particular favourite, so when he spotted Bertone’s MG he didn’t just buy the car on the spot, but signed a contract to purchase 200 cars to sell back in the USA. They must have heard Nuccio’s sigh of relief as far as Genoa.

Bertone designed the bodywork alongside Franco Scaglione, the MG being the pair’s first proper collaboration.

Stanley ‘Wacky’ Arnolt’s reinvented MG TD was intended to succeed in the USA, but the coachbuilt car’s high price stopped it from achieving the popularity its maker hoped

Scaglione was by then 34 and had not worked in the automotive industry at all, but Nuccio gave him a chance on the basis of his skill with a pencil and a dose of aristocratic snobbery – he later claimed to have hired the Florentine solely on the basis of his “fine family” and good education.

Dubious qualifications aside, Scaglione would become Bertone’s most prolific designer of the 1960s, penning the Alfa Romeo Tipo 33, NSU Sport Prinz and countless specials including the Alfa Romeo BAT series.

Some sources also state that Michelotti was involved, although Nuccio’s own accounts don’t mention him.

The Arnolt-MG dhc is agile and connected, and rewards a spirited hand at the wheel

Bertone’s aim was a melding of British and Italian styles.

The result was simple but utterly transformative from the pre-war-looking, separate-winged TD.

The front shows a strong resemblance to a Lancia Aurelia, its MG grille creating a similarly peaked bonnet, while its profile and tail have hints of Aston Martin.

The Arnolt-MG’s 1250cc ‘four’ delivers no real fireworks, but the XPAG unit feels lively thanks to short gear ratios

Constrained by the MG chassis beneath, however, it is oddly narrow for a post-war car with enclosed front wings.

Steel-bodied but with aluminium opening panels, remarkably the drophead coupé weighed just 9kg more than the TD on which it was based and, thanks to better aerodynamics, was actually faster.

Arnolt had a deal with MG to have the TD supplied to Bertone as a chassis rather than paying for complete cars.

Those underpinnings were totally unaltered, even down to the spring rates, and that is immediately obvious once you step into the Arnolt.

This rare Arnolt-MG dhc’s chassis plate confirms its origins

The T-series’ characteristic soft suspension allows the car to dip to one side as your weight transfers into it.

The interior is almost completely formed of MG parts, too, the instrument binnacle – as much as it has one – being the central panel of a TD turned upside down, while the large rev counter and speedometer are rearranged to flank the panel in a stylish – if usually quite obscured – arrangement.

Mounted on a painted-metal dash rather than the flat, Rexine-wrapped board of the MG, it once again manages to look far more modern than its donor car.

The Arnolt-MG dhc’s large rev counter, located to the left of the steering wheel

The seats and door cards are Bertone’s own creations, however, most notable for including wind-up windows – something MG hadn’t offered on convertibles of its own since the luxurious pre-war WA tourers, and wouldn’t again until the arrival of the MGB in 1963.

The exterior doorhandles are also Bertone pieces, sleek retracting items that were the preserve of Latin coachbuilders at the time.

There’s a sense of a high floor in the Arnolt, betraying the car’s obsolete, body-on-frame construction, but to compensate for it the waistline is proportionally high, too.

The Arnolt-MG rewards at speeds that won’t get you into trouble

You feel very much inside the Arnolt, whereas piloting a TD is to be perched on top of the car.

Once you start driving, however, it instantly becomes more familiar.

The single-plate dry clutch is quite harsh to use at first, and the car reminds you of its bouncily soft springs as it bucks back and forth until you get the hang of setting off smoothly.

The trick is just to give it lots of revs and set off as if you mean it, rather than try to get under way gracefully.

The Bertone crest on the Torinese-built Arnolt-MG dhc

The steering is direct and quick. The Moto-Lita wheel in this car is slightly smaller than a TD’s helm, and that does make it heavy at low speeds, but feedback through the rack-and-pinion set-up is strong.

If anything, it can become slightly too raw as you find yourself gripping the wheel firmly to keep this nimble little drophead straight and true, and if that’s over a rough surface for a prolonged time, you’ll start to feel the vibrations in your hands – much like the ache you get from spending a long time behind the wheel of a go-kart.

An unambiguous delight, however, is just how peppy and light the car feels, no doubt thanks to the negligible weight increase of its rebodying.

The Arnolt-MG dhc’s black paint over brown hide replaced the original green over grey back in 2002

When driven properly, which is to say never gingerly, the Arnolt’s rorty 1250cc XPAG engine gets the car moving with a sense of real urgency.

That acceleration tails off when closing in on motorway speeds, making its 0-60mph time look less than impressive, but its short gearing means it feels lively up to 45mph, and the car’s connectivity to the road exaggerates every one of those miles per hour.

Chuck it into a bend and the Arnolt drops a shoulder to roll through the curve as if you’re driving it on its doorhandles – yet you’ll remain well under the speed limit while doing so.

The Arnolt-MG dhc’s elegantly simple but stylish Bertone lines transformed the TD

The great talent of the TD, well alive here, is that it never feels incapable despite its low limits. It’s balanced, nimble and always smile-inducing.

Wacky was confident in the car, and it’s easy to see why. It looked stylish and up-to-date, was fun to drive and, unlike most Italian cars of the time, was easy to look after.

Not only was the TD’s engineering simple, but Americans could also rely on a growing network of MG dealers (many of which belonged to Arnolt himself).

Offered for $3145 in 1953 ($2995 for the coupé), this was the cheapest coachbuilt car for sale in America, while a standard TD cost $2157.

The Arnolt-MG dhc’s retracting doorhandle

A bargain for a bespoke offering it might have been, but its hefty price put it in a bracket where its modest four-pot became a hindrance.

Triumph’s much bigger four-cylinder-powered TR2 arrived on the market in the same year at a lower cost, as did the six-cylinder Chevrolet Corvette at a couple of hundred dollars more.

A Jaguar XK120, one of the fastest cars in the world, was not unfeasibly more expensive at just under $4000.

Arnolt couldn’t sell the cars as quickly as hoped, and by the time MG moved on from the TD to the TF in late 1953, refusing to sell chassis of the new car, he’d built just 103 of the planned 200, including 37 dropheads.

Stylistically, the Arnolt-MG dhc is worlds apart from the separate-winged TD upon which it was based

This particular Arnolt-MG was delivered new to a customer in Indiana in July 1954, long after Bertone had finished producing the model, demonstrating how slowly the cars were sold.

It had sailed up through the Great Lakes to Chicago, passing tens of thousands of Detroit’s products heading in the opposite direction, in October 1953.

It stayed in the States for most of its life, moving to Connecticut in 2002 where it had a full restoration, changing from dark green over grey to its current black over brown.

Eventually it came to Portugal, where it’s one of a pair of Arnolt-MGs in the same collection.

The Arnolt-MG dhc’s dashboard display is from the TD but inverted – and the treatment works surprisingly well

The Catch-22 for low-volume car makers struck the Arnolt: it couldn’t be made in the numbers to achieve a price that would allow it to compete.

Had it been a mass-produced MG, and priced like one, it would surely have had more success.

After a decade denying the fact, MG finally admitted it needed to move on from the T-series less than two years later with the MGA in 1955. Even then, it wouldn’t offer a car as refined at the Arnolt-MG until the ’60s.

The Arnolt marque, with both the MG and his later efforts, never became a viable business, instead relying on funds from Wacky’s other operations.

The Arnolt-MG dhc has a four-speed manual gearbox

When Stanley Arnolt died in 1963 aged just 56, it was all over – although he had stopped trying to build models under his own name by 1959.

He continued commissioning Italian coachbuilt cars, though, and when Alfa Romeo was finished with BAT 5, he bought it.

Speaking in 1963, Nuccio Bertone made it clear that Arnolt had saved his firm at a time when Italian coachbuilding was struggling for recognition, and that his commissions had been the spark that relit the fire not just for Bertone, but arguably all of Turin’s carrozzerie.

He said: “He did so much for our business. What we were capable of doing and, above all, our tastes, were not understood at home. But he understood those things immediately. Without that, we would not have had the development that we have known.”

‘Chuck it into a bend and the car drops a shoulder to roll through the curve as if you’re driving it on its doorhandles’

Around half the Arnolt-MGs built are thought to survive, now collector’s items that, just as Wacky intended, offer Italian glamour with easy-to-maintain running gear.

The Arnolt is smart-looking, well-built and fun, but driving a car that few have even heard of, and without which everything from the Lamborghini Espada to the Škoda Favorit would possibly not exist, makes each hair-raising, slow-car-fast drive in this MG all the more special.

Images: Max Edleston

Thanks to: Garagisti

Other wacky Arnolts

Stanley Arnolt’s other projects (clockwise from top): Arnolt-Aston Martin, Arnolt-Bentley, Arnolt-Bristol

MG’s refusal to supply either old TD or new TF chassis didn’t stop Stanley Arnolt’s desire to combine British mechanicals with Italian coachwork, although some accounts suggest he was contractually bound to fulfil the order for 200 cars he’d agreed with Nuccio Bertone at the Turin Salon. Arnolt put his name to three further cars, all with bodywork by Bertone.

1953 Arnolt-Aston Martin

Arnolt first turned to Aston Martin, clearly having learnt the lesson that the MG’s humble powertrain was working against it in the States. Based on the DB2/4, its bodywork was by Scaglione again.

Four examples were built before Aston refused to supply further chassis. Wacky commissioned a further three Aston Martins from Bertone, but these were not badged as Arnolts.

1953 Arnolt-Bentley

A one-off based on an R-type Continental, the Arnolt-Bentley was Wacky’s personal car. It resembled the Arnolt-MG at a larger scale, with its high waistline and similar frontal arrangement.

It’s believed to be the only Bentley that was bodied by Bertone.

1954-’59 Arnolt-Bristol

Taking the Bristol 403’s running gear, Bertone built 142 of these cars, sometimes marketed as the Bolide.

The styling was an evolution of the Arnolt-Aston, with a higher bonnet line – to house the deeper Bristol engine – and taller peaks on the wings to disguise that fact.

It had a mixed racing career, with some success at Sebring, but remained a slow seller. The last car sold in 1963, four years after production ended.

Factfile

Arnolt-MG dhc

Sold/number built 1953/37
Construction steel ladder chassis, steel and aluminium bodywork
Engine all-iron, ohv 1250cc ‘four’, twin SU carburettors
Max power 54bhp @ 5200rpm
Max torque 63lb ft @ 2600rpm
Transmission four-speed manual, RWD
Suspension: front independent, by wishbones, coil springs rear live axle, semi-elliptic leaf springs; lever-arm dampers f/r
Steering rack and pinion
Brakes drums
Length 13ft 4in (4064mm)
Width 5ft (1524mm)
Height 4ft 7in (1397mm)
Wheelbase 7ft 10in (2387mm)
Weight 2093lb (949kg)
0-60mph 23 secs
Top speed 75mph
Mpg 25
Price new $3145 (1953)
Price now £120-150,000*