If you want to peruse hundreds of old road test reports from a variety of mainly British magazines without bothering yourself with copyright, they’re right here.
Let’s look at one, Autocar’s 1968 report on the MG 1300 as fitted with the then unusual and posh option of one of those fancy automatic gearbox thingies.
Thus equipped, our little MG could be persuaded up to about 95 mph, to 60 mph in about 14 sec which is quicker than I expected and drank fuel at about 25 mpg as compared with almost 27 mpg for the DIY variant, also better than I expected. For comparison, the latest Focus has a fancy eight speed automatic with the benefit of fifty plus years of advances, yet according to official test figures it’s also about 10% worse than a manual one.
Autocar were quite impressed and mentioned approvingly that it didn’t stall when put into gear, quite a thing in the days of carburettors and manual chokes, changed gear almost smoothly at high speeds if not at lower ones and weren’t bothered too much by the thump when a gear was engaged. On the other hand, it rather deteriorated during a two day journey with four faults and a design failing appearing
Want to see more? There’s a vast variety.