MG needs to get back to its sports car roots

OPAL FRUITS, Stephen Fry’s tweets and Top of the Pops. It’s funny how you only really start appreciating some things when they’re gone.

In fact, I’d like to add the MGF to that list. It's roughly 20 years since its launch  – and the more I think about it, the more I realise its absence is a fairly significant bit of Britain’s automotive armoury missing.

Okay, so it wasn’t perfect. If I had a pound for every armchair critic who dismisses the ‘F for blown head gaskets I’d have enough to buy a replacement Rover K-Series engine, but much more serious were its poor showings in customer satisfaction surveys when it was new. Oh, and Anthea Turner was a proud owner.

Yet despite Anthea’s best efforts Britain loved the ‘F – in fact, for a brief stint it actually outsold Mazda’s MX-5 – so for more than a decade it acted as the nation’s fun, inoffensive sports car of choice. Just like the MGB did a generation earlier.

Where is the modern equivalent? It’s the middle of summer, there’s a generation of company car drivers given allowances rather than mid-range Mondeos by their fleet managers – and what I suppose would be called the MGG is nowhere to be seen.

MG is alive and well, but it should be hunting on the territory it used to call its own as well as targeting the Hyundai-peddling masses.

I drove an MG3 last year and it was frugal and fun in an old-school, Citroen Saxo-ish sort of way. I suppose – and feel free to raise your eyebrows at this one – it does sort of live up to the legacy left by the old MG Metro. Fair enough, but what I reckon the world really craves is another proper MG, the sort you can pop the roof down and enjoy when the sun’s shining, and hole up in the pub and discuss breakdowns when it isn’t.

The MGF’s old rivals – the Fiat Barchetta, the Toyota MR2, the Alfa Spider and so on – are all gone, leaving the MX-5 as just about the only option left if you want a small, fun, inoffensive sports car.

Now is the time for MG’s Chinese masters to make it happen, but chances are they won’t. Don’t get bored with waiting – chuck a grand at a cheap MGF and remind the world what it’s missing.

The Life On Cars MGB does MG90

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It's time to find out whether the new MG range is any good

BROKEN your New Year’s resolution yet? I haven’t, although for 2014 one of my goals seems to be a bit more ambitious than most.

This isn't about shedding a stone by sweating it out on a treadmill or deciding to raise a few more quid for charity. This year, one of my aims is to actually drive one of the modern day MGs and let you know if they’re any good.

Largely because I want to come to my conclusions about one of 2013’s great motoring mysteries. Why, when you weren't looking, has MG’s market share halved?

As someone who owns an old MG, I was actually quite excited about seeing the octagon badge back on the front of a brand new car, even if it was – whisper it quietly – engineered and designed at the behest of the firm’s Chinese owners. Yes, I know that quite a bit of the development work for the new range of MGs was done in the West Midlands, but the result still – visually at least – feels more Peking Duck than Yorkshire Pudding.

I’d love to be able to let you know definitively if you should cancel that Ford Focus order after all and rush out and get a new MG, but the sales figures suggest that the worthy-but-bland range of hatches and saloons just isn’t doing for us Brits. The most stats reveal that just 384 of you treated yourselves to a new MG, and that’s the figure for the whole of the UK. Compared to this time last year, sales are down 44%.

While the MG6 and MG3 might divide opinion among the motoring press – and I have read lots of favourable reviews, so this isn't just about cheap MG bashing – for whatever reason they just aren't cutting it with the great British public. 

Where, chaps, is the successor to the MG TF? Abingdon’s most famous automotive export – for all the turbocharged Maestros and Metro rally cars – is about keeping it simple, dropping the top and enjoying the sunshine for not much outlay. China, as we know, is the world’s fastest emerging superpower and MG’s owner, the Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation, is state-owned. Surely it has a few quid to chuck at designing a proper MG, which people might actually buy?

While I've no doubt the current range isn't THAT bad, MG deserves to do so much better. A brand that gets just about everyone nostalgic, a world that’s no longer too credit-crunched to buy into it and the state funding of an Asian superpower to make it happen.

A properly marketed, cheap, simple sports car is the MG we all want, but until then I'll have to contend myself with finally blagging my way into an MG6.

Watch this space…

The MG CS doesn't add anything to the crossover party

THE saloon is dead. Long live the sort of hatchback-meets-people-carrier-meets-off-roader!

Unless you’ve been living in a cave for the last year or two you won’t have failed to notice that your nearest car park isn’t crammed with Mondeos and Vectras anymore; increasingly, it’s Jukes and Countrymans you’ll encounter.

Ordinary hatchbacks masquerading as off-roaders – or crossovers, as the estate agents of the motoring world would rather you and I call them - have been around for ages, as anyone familiar with the Talbot Matra Rancho (well worth a cheeky Google, by the way) will testify. The recent renaissance really took off when Nissan dropped saloons entirely and replaced the Primera with the Qashqai, following it up with the weirder but usefully smaller Juke. Since then Skoda, Renault, Chevrolet, and MINI are among the car makers vying for a chomp at the crossover cake, with Vauxhall and Peugeot set to join the party later this year.

The only problem with crossovers is they essentially fall into two categories. There’s the deliberately trendy, lifestyle-orientated offerings like the MINI Countryman and the Nissan Juke, which like Justin Bieber downloads sell in their shedloads but somehow make your mind ache slightly at their very existence.

Then there’s the likes of Toyota’s Urban Cruiser and Mitsubishi’s ASX – crossovers which do everything you could ever ask of them but are so mind-numbingly dull to behold you wonder why they bothered in the first place. Because crossovers are so style-driven, all you have to do to work out which camp yours belongs in is to have a long, hard look at it.

I worry, just a little bit, that MG’s gone for the wrong approach of the two – if their proposed offering, the CS is anything to go by.

Last year they brought a design study for a crossover, called the Icon, which divided opinion because it looked like someone had managed to take an old MG BGT, ram a bicycle pump up its exhaust pipe and pump it full of air. It might have divided opinion but the important thing is that at least people had an opinion on it, unlike the new car, which isn't a bad looking car but suggests to me that MG’s Chinese owners have chickened out and gone for the most derivative approach possible. Even the name’s boring; MG CS sounds like somewhere you’d buy a three piece suite in a Bank Holiday sale.

To summarise crossovers, no matter how many of them are being bought, are either annoyingly in-yer-face or duller than a wet weekend in Northampton, and MG isn’t helping.

In fact, I only like one; the Skoda Yeti.

The MGB GT V8 - a great car with a wonderful engine

WHAT do the Rover P6, the TVR Griffith, Range Rover and the Morgan Plus 8 all have in common?

Fans of loud, burbly exhaust notes will probably nail this one instantly - lift this very different variety of bonnets and you'll find, in one state of tune or other, a Rover V8. A aluminium thunderstorm which - thanks to it powering a string of my dad's Land Rovers and Range Rovers - provided the motoring soundtrack for much of my childhood.

 

Yet it was only yesterday I finally got up close to one of the rarer entrants from the Rover V8's back catalogue - the MGB GT V8, of which only 2,591 were made during a stint in the Seventies when British Leyland had the three litre Ford Capri in their sights. That's why I popped over to my friends at Parkhill Garage to see what should be an instant hit in my books - a Rover V8 in a MGB GT, a classic I'm more than familiar with.

It didn't disappoint.

You just have to click the video I recorded to realise why I was smitten as soon as it started up - just listen to that exhaust note! Compared to my own, four cylinder MGB it's got forty more horses to call upon, it does roughly the same to the gallon (weird, but true), and - because the aluminium V8 is such a light engine - it actually weighs a tiny bit less too. Oh, and it's rare and looks fantastic and goes like stink.

This or a Capri? You decide...

Have you got a motoring story or event you'd like to share with Life On Cars? Get in touch by sending an email to david.simister@hotmail.co.uk or leave a comment below...

2012 has been a year of great motoring moments

STRANGER things, I guess, have happened, but I’ll share it with you anyway. As the clocks chime midnight and drunks everywhere usher in a New Year, the most popular Life On Cars piece of 2012 was about the Raleigh Chopper. Which isn’t a car at all.

Still, there were plenty of proper motoring moments – you know, ones involving cars – which I’ve enjoyed over the past 12 months. Here’s ten of my favourites:

1) Doing an advanced driving lesson... in a Lotus Evora S 

2012 marked the year when I took the plunge with the Institute of Advanced Motorists and did their advanced driving course (thoroughly recommended, by the way). I did all of the lessons in my Mazda MX-5 – which was fun in itself – except for the one week when I had a supercharged Lotus Evora S at my disposal. There are probably more sensible choices for what’s basically a driving lesson than a mid-engined supercar, but I used it anyway. Big fun...

2) Setting a blisteringly fast lap time in a Wigan cotton mill 

Literally, as the sharp pain in my hands – shot to bits from fighting furiously with a tiny steering wheel – proved for hours afterwards, but a karting race organised a birthday treat for Yours Truly was well worth it. If you’ve ever fancied flinging a go-kart around a two-storey track crafted from an old cotton mill, give Elite Karting in Wigan a bell. Then again, the three seconds my mate shaved off every lap over mine meant he lapped me twice in our 40 minute race. He still hasn’t let me live that down...

3) Driving a Rover which refuses to give up 

The MGB GT and the MX-5 are undoubtedly the glamour models of the Life On Cars fleet, but when the going gets tough it was always the ancient Rover 214 that’d be called upon – and it delivered, time after time, without a whisper of complaint. In February, it drifted its way across a Cumbrian snowdrift which had defeated a much newer BMW 1-Series, a MINI and a SEAT Leon. Then it sailed right the way across the country to deliver two people and a week’s worth of camping gear safely in Norfolk, and got back again, without a hiccup, and only last month it freed a far heavier Mondeo Estate from a muddy campsite. Not bad for a car costing £300. Rover and Honda engineers of the late Eighties... I salute you!

4) Pitting sports cars against hot hatches in Mid Wales 

We took four performance hits to the utterly wonderful A44 and found four very different ways to get your motoring kicks. Given the choice between a Volkswagen Polo G40 (ultra rare hot hatch from the people who brought you the Golf GTI, with added supercharger whine), a Rover Metro GTi (affordable, rev-happy and goes like stink), a Mazda MX-5 (slowest of the bunch but the only one with rear-drive and the option of driving al fresco) or a Ford Racing Puma (pretty, rare, quick and controversial – see number nine) which would you pick?

5) Going back in time 

Obviously not literally but on the few occasions when I brought the MGB GT to the right road, on the right day, it really was like driving in a simpler bygone age. This heady blend of high-octane petrol, 20w50 oil and Rostyle wheels - which proved a big hit at this year’s Ormskirk MotorFest – provided a nostalgic treat, which is best expressed in moody, monochrome pictorial form. Like the shot you see above.

6) Discovering that you don’t need four wheels to make a great car 

 A couple of people have already asked me how a three-wheeled car with a 1920s body, skinny tyres, a motorbike engine bolted to the front and an absence of any doors, windscreen, windows or roof can possibly be good enough to be named as the best thing I’ve driven in a year that’s produced such hits as the Toyota GT-86. But it just is. Take a Morgan Threewheeler out for a blast down on a country lane on a sunny day – in fact any day, come to think of it – and you’ll know exactly what I mean.

7) Capturing the moment at the Ormskirk MotorFest

The special online magazines made by Life On Cars are, by and large, quite well received (which, given it was only ever meant to be a one-off originally, is a good thing). The edition I wrote with the cooperation of the Ormskirk MotorFest organisers, however, went a bit further than that, being read not by a few dozen or even hundred people, but by thousands of people. I just hope you all enjoyed reading it as much as I did researching, writing and producing the thing!

8) Driving Britain’s best roads... in an MX-5 

 The Buttertubs Pass is great in any car but when you’re in something as delicately balanced as an MX-5 it feels a little bit extra special (although the bright evening sunlight didn’t help). But even that wonderful moment couldn’t top the occasion when what seemed like a farm track in the middle of nowhere eventually brought us out onto the road between Pentrefoelas and Ffestiniog, which is one of the most spectacular bits of tarmac I’ve ever encountered. To have discovered it any car would’ve been fun but it was even better being behind the wheel of a great little sports car.

9) Discussing whether the Ford Racing Puma deserves its classic-in-waiting status 

Just one of the many pub arguments I’ve had with the small-but-dedicated group of petrolheads who hold Life On Cars’ automotive assertions to account. Other topics to get The Farmers’ Arms treatment include whether or not off-roaders are stupid and pointless, whether a Toyota GT-86 is better than a top-of-the-range MX-5 and if in cash-strapped 2012 MPG was more important than MPH. For these endless hours of entertaining discussion, I thank this small group of people who know who they are.

10) Raising £126 for charidee

Finally, there was the night when Life On Cars and the region’s petrolheads came together to help support a very good cause by taking part in a pub quiz with a difference – all the questions were motoring-related. Even though there was a broken sound system, a very drunk Nigel Mansell fan and a slight mistake in a motorbike question to deal with, the night still managed to raise £126 for the National Autistic Society. You never know, there might even be another one in 2013...

Make no mistake, 2012’s been a great year for motoring moments and Life On Cars will continue giving you a petrolhead perspective throughout 2013. Happy New Year!

Tatton Park Classic & Performance Car Spectacular 2012

DAMP weather hasn't done anything to dampen the spirits of the hundreds of classic car fans who've been visiting Tatton Park this weekend, to visit one of the biggest shows and autojumbles in the north of England.

Tatton Park has long been a petrolhead favourite but this year showgoers are being treated to three days rather than the usual two, on account of the show being held on the Diamond Jubilee weekend. Street party or the chance to check out millions of pounds worth of stunning old cars - which would you rather take up?

Because journalists still have to work on the Bank Holiday Monday, Life On Cars went up earlier today to check out some of the best automotive attractions, and took these pictures:

 

The Classic & Performance Car Spectacular is also on tomorrow and Monday at the Tatton Park estate, near Knutsford, and is open between 10am and 4pm. Tickets cost £7.50 for adults, and car parking costs £5. For more information click here.

Life On Cars has had a whopping 4,000 online visits over the past month and to celebrate has something a little special on the way. Keep an eye on here over the next few days...

An MGB GT that's even better than mine

CONTINUING our occasional series on classic cars casually spotted during lunch breaks, here's an MGB GT I found a stone's throw from the seafront earlier.

If you saw the pictures of the MG Icon earlier this week it'll be obviously from these pictures which car from the company's back catalogue inspired it; everything from the nostalgic red paintjob to the bluff, chrome radiator grille and the rear hatchback comes straight from the Sixties sports coupe.

More annoyingly though, it's in almost concours condition, making my own beloved B GT look a bit rough round the edges by comparision - even though mine's got the desirable Webasto full length sunroof and I'd be much happier parking it on a side street than this beautiful G-reg example. Envious, me? Not at all...

 Do you own this classic car? Get in touch with Life On Cars by sending an email to david.simister@champnews.com and let us know more about it!

An MGB owner's view of the new MG Icon

THIS unusual offering is being hyped as the hottest new automotive offering at this week's Beijing Motorshow - but in terms of style it's straight from the Sixties.

The MG Icon might look like a sporty, small off-roader in the vein of say, Nissan's Juke but the concept car's British designer reckons it pays tribute to MG's sports cars of the Fifties and Sixties, particularly the MGB GT coupe which would have been a familiar sight on Britain's roads after its introduction in 1966.

Anthony Williams-Kenny, MG's chief designer, said: "The MG brand has a unique set of values and heritage and allows us to offer individual design values to our products. The MG Icon represents our vision of a modern MG and we feel that the small SUV canvas demonstrates MG’s capacity for progressive design with respect for its long heritage. "We have balanced familiar brand cues, such as the wide and powerful front end graphic interpretation and, as one would expect, with a strong focus on the unique MG octagon.

The MG Icon clearly demonstrates a progressive and soulful British spirit and has a lithe and powerful stance – its proportion harmonised by feature lines interpreted from MG’s iconic greats."

The car has already won an award for Best Concept from the Beijing show's organisers but as an owner of one of the original MG BGTs from the early Seventies I'm not so sure; details like the way the lights sit on top of the rear wings worked well on the crisp coupe, but on the Icon they look a little bloated and out of place, while the rest of the car seems dominated by the enormous rear wheelarches.

It's certainly challenging but it does at least doff its cap to the company's heritage, and is more obviously a descendant of MGs of old than the MG6 and the soon-to-arrive MG5 are.

Share your motoring stories with David Simister by sending an email to david.simister@champnews.com

International MG Show at Stoneleigh Park 2012

IT WAS like being let loose in a toy shop, only with much bigger, MG-shaped toys.

Enthusiasts of everything octagon-badged got sent to Coventry today to check one of the largest MG shows in Europe, with everything from the earliest TA roadsters from the Thirties right through to the modern day ZR, ZS and ZT models well catered for when it came to spares (although, strangely, I didn't see a single MG6 anywhere, and the MG-badged Metros, Maestros and Montegos were notable by the absence).

But by far the best bit was the Stoneleigh Park warehouse a stone's throw from the main hall itself, which were filled, row by row, with hundreds of MGs. Magnettes, RV8 roadsters, ZR hot hatches, ZT-T estates - you name it, someone had brought one to the show, ready for car enthusiasts from across the world to gawp at.

Life On Cars took these pictures at the show:

Ormskirk Motorfest preview event revs up

ORMSKIRK'S traders are being invited to go full throttle next week at an event being held to give them a special preview of a motoring spectacular taking place in August.

Aintree Circuit Club said it is inviting representatives of Ormskirk's businesses to come along next Wednesday (March 16) to a preview of the Ormskirk Motorfest, a showcase and parade of classic and racing cars scheduled to take place in the town centre on August 28.

Event Co-ordinator, John Bailie, on behalf of organisers Aintree Circuit Club, said:

"We have been amazed at the incredible interest which the MotorFest has already generated. We'll have historic Grand Prix cars on the streets, along with a wide variety of racing cars and motor cycles, sports, classic and vintage cars and many more.

"This event is sure to bring many visitors to the town, so we're staging this Preview Event to show the Ormskirk business community how it will benefit them, and how they can play their part in ensuring its success".

Last year The Champion revealed that the club was working with the borough council to hold the inaugural event on the August bank holiday weekend, which will combine a display of classic cars in Coronation Park with a parade of sports and racing cars on the town's one-way system.

Martin Forshaw, Portfolio Holder for Planning and Transportation at West Lancashire Borough Council, said the event would help bring nationwide attention to the town, and is keen for locally-based businesses to find out more.

"The West Lancashire Borough, all the town's High Street retailers and other local businesses stand to gain from the exposure that this event will give the town on a prime Bank Holiday weekend, and it's sure to attract media coverage on a local, national, and possibly international level," he said.

"That's why the plans for the MotorFest are being revealed to local businesses as a first priority".

As well as viewing plans for the MotorFest, attendees of the event, being held will be held at The Green Room, Moor Street will be able to view the MG ZR racing car which is regularly driven by Aintree Circuit Club's Chairman Mike Ashcroft.

If you'd like to attend the preview, or participate in the MotorFest event, please contact John Bailie on 07860 255485 or email jb@aintree.org.uk

Prepare to fire up the... MG 6

AN ICONIC name from Britain's motoring past is making a comeback - and no, it's not the old sports car currently in the Life On Cars garage either.

The MG 6 is the first all new car from MG, now in Chinese ownership, since the MGF sports car of 1995, but the latest model's a five-door hatchback which the company's hoping will bring a bit of upmarket cachet to the small car sector.

“This is a milestone day for the iconic MG brand and for the UK automotive industry. MG has begun the international launch of an all new model that has been designed and engineered here in the UK, for the global automotive market.”

“Currently we only build and sell the mid-engined MG TF sports car here in the UK, but we can now look forward to expanding the range of MG products,” Guy Jones, Sales and Marketing Director for MG Motor UK said.

MG is a fondly remembered name with British car lovers, and is best remembered for its MGA and MGB sports cars of the Fifties and Sixties, the MG Metro and Maestro hot hatches of the 1980s and more recently for taking on Mazda's MX-5 with its mid-engined MGF.

But the company, as part of MG Rover Group, went into administration in 2005 and is now owned by the Shanghai Automotive Industry Cooperation, who revived the badge on the MG 7, a revised and sportier version of the Rover 75, and the the MG TF, the latest version of the longstanding sports car. The Rover name, which was passed onto Ford by previous licence holders BMW, is now owned by Tata as part of its Jaguar Land Rover group.

The new model, a distant relation to the old Rover 75, is currently built by MG's owners in China but will be made in the UK later this year, and is powered by heavily updated versions of Rover's K-Series engines. The 6 is also expected to be followed by a smaller supermini, the MG 3, later this year.

It's a brave move into a tough market for MG's owners, but with a prestigious badge and patriotic appeal on its side the company might just pull it off.

Yes, you can still buy classic sports cars for £200

ANYONE who remembers what happened when I spent £100 on a set of wheels might want to look away now, because I've just doubled the stakes.

Regular readers might recall the Renault 5 I managed to blag for the price of a train ticket earlier this year, and I got lucky because - aside from a broken heater which makes West Lancashire permenantly feel like the West Indies - the ancient hatchback's become one of the most reliable things I've ever owned.

But even I couldn't believe myself when I spent twice what it cost on an old sports car that's spent the last ten years of its life stuck inside a garage in Cumbria. Yep, I've just bought an MGB that doesn't work.

Like the original Mini that's always at the top of this column, it's from an era when strikes at British Leyland dotted the TV news bulletins every day and as a result anything that came out of MG's Abingdon factory around that time is going to be crushingly unreliable.

In normal circumstances I wouldn't even bother with the MGB because I've never particularly liked it, but this one's different.

Eagle-eyed readers are going to spot that it's the far more stylish MGB GT, and swaps the soft top for a swoopy bit of steel roofline, the gorgeous Rostyle steel wheels and something called a Webasto sunroof, which is basically a clever bit of folding canvas which looks like it cost about 30p as an optional extra. Other features unique to this particular version are doors way overdue a replacement, decade-old engine oil and brakes which are seized solid. Not quite the £200 bargain buy I was expecting, then?

Of course it is - it's a classic sports car for the price of a long weekend on the continent, and it's got a solid shell and stashes of paperwork thrown in. As a commuter car it's failed already because it's broken, but as something I can imagine swanning around Southport in next year it's packed with potential.

The MGB roadster, the open-top one you always see at classic car shows, has been hogged by CAMRA members desperate to drive them to quaint village pubs you only ever see on Heartbeat, but the B GT is better because its somehow more subtle in its style.

It's The Shadows rather than Cliff Richard.