Axon’s Automotive Anorak: MG – Mostly Global

I mentioned the cancellation of MG Live when I recently bumped into an old MG owning acquaintance, proudly displaying his immaculate and very pampered MGB GT at a local charity classic car show. During the course of our quick and initially congenial chat, my mention of the Silverstone MG event’s postponement for this year seemed to mildly irritate the classic MG fan.

Once I’d set him off he then began to bemoan the fact that MG – that ‘most British’ of sports car makers – is no longer British and now builds anything but sports cars! To quote my MG acquaintance, “When Cecil Kimber founded MG as Morris Garages in Oxford in 1924, he didn’t do it to build bloody hatchbacks and SUVs, especially overseas. He must now be spinning in his grave!” 

Although the increasingly flustered MGB GT owner was partially right, historically MG has had a long but sporadic career of building all manner of cars; not just the sporting two-seater roadsters that it is most famous for today. It has also offered small and large luxury sports saloons, plus hot hatches and now SUVs, the latter made in China and India.

During MG’s stop-start 95-year career, the ex-Abingdon sports car maker regularly built performance-orientated saloons alongside its wind-in-the-hair roadsters, including the comfortable and stylish pre-war SA, VA and WA models, plus the 1950s Y and Magnette saloons of the 1950s.

The early 1960s saw MG launch its first front-wheel-drive (FWD) sporting saloon in the form of the ADO16 MG 1100 and 1300, with the popular FWD MG Metro and Maestro ‘hot hatch’ models typifying the 1980s, along with the MG Montego and later Rover badge-engineered (and surprisingly capable) ZR, ZS and ZT models.

Today MG sells the sporty 3 hatch model, as well as 5 and 6 hatches and saloons in Asia, along with a growing selection of SUVs, such as the GS and new ZS. It doesn’t currently make any MG sports car models, however, and also doesn’t now produce any vehicles in its UK ‘home’ market, despite new MGs still being designed and engineered in the British Midlands.

Much to my MGB-owning acquaintance’s dismay I’m sure, MGs built overseas are nothing new, with sporting models being assembled in outposts of the Commonwealth for many years, including B models being built in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.

Other, lesser-known none-British-built MGs include the BMC ‘Farina’ bodied MG Magnette made in Argentina in the mid-1960s by the local car maker Siam Di Tella; the model briefly proving to be a popular choice with local taxi drivers in Buenos Aires!

Sticking with MGs produced in the Spanish-speaking world, in Chile the MG 1100 was built for the local market using a GRP body for the sake of simplicity and favourable local content tax benefits. The MG 1100/1300 was also built in Spain itself, produced by BMC/BL’s Pamplona-based subsidiary AUTHI for many years; the model outliving its UK parent. At the 1973 Barcelona Motor Show, AUTHI even presented a prototype MG badged version of its locally-produced three-box booted ADO16, based on the domestic Austin Victoria saloon derivative, which sadly never made production.

In the USA, the ‘mini-Rolls-Royce’ Vanden Plas 1100 Princess was strangely sold as the MG Sports Sedan, such was the power and reputation of the MG brand across the Pond.

Bringing the overseas MG story more up to date, the short-lived, zany and extreme Mustang V8-powered MG X-Power SV was mostly made in Italy, using the previous Modena facilities and platform of the equally short-lived De Tomaso Biguá and Qvale Mangusta.

Following the MG Rover Group’s 2005 demise and subsequent messy takeover by China-based Nanjing/SAIC Motor, MG’s last remaining British-built models – the MG ZR, ZS, ZT and TF – were revived in China with SAIC gaining the models’ intellectual property rights, as the MG 3, 4, 7 (750) and TF. The MG TF was briefly re-introduced into the UK with production shortly revived at the historic old Austin/MG Rover Longbridge factory, along with the later MG 6 and new 3, before all Longbridge production was finally relocated over to China.

With MG now signifying Modern Gentleman in China, today the MG range extends to a quartet of hatchback and saloon models in the People’s Republic, along with a trio of SUV models, but still no true sports car being made.

As well as a return to the UK market, MG is now gradually being reintroduced into various markets around the globe, including a return to Australia and New Zealand, plus major expansion into many Asian markets. MG production has recently commenced for the very first time in India, with the HS/ZS SUV being built there and curiously sold as the MG Hector. The model has been greeted with a very enthusiastic reception by the Indian press, and is promoted in all local advertising by Benedict Cumberbatch!

The MG HS/ZS/Hector and other SUV models made today are a far cry from the drafty but characterful sporting MGs so many of us Brits know and love. Another new MG now being assembled and sold in Thailand might just be a stretch too far though for the much-loved sports car marque as we know it.

This brand-new Thailand model is the MG V80, an upright MPV and light commercial vehicle based around the old British LDV Maxus van, making this the first-ever MG to seat seven or more passengers! I didn’t dare mention this new V80 model to my MGB GT-owning acquaintance as this new might have pushed him over the edge, and possibly could cause MG founder Cecil Kimber to spin in his grave!