MG TF LE500
Posted by Stephen Dobie at 5:00PM on Thursday 28 August, 2008 7 Comments
When a new car is bigged-up as a 'proper racing experience', what comes to mind? A GT3 RS? An Atom, perhaps? Or maybe the new TG track leader, a Gumpert Apollo?
The car in question is, in fact... the relaunched MG TF. Right.
So what exactly have the Chinese done to turn a 13-year old Rover convertible into a BTCC rivalling thrill?
Well they've hidden the roll cage very well indeed. In the same place they put the ultra-quick sequential gearbox, I'd presume. And the big engine.
All I seemed to be able to find was a tweaked version of the old 1.8 from the pre-bankruptcy TF, mated to a rubbery five speed manual.
Maybe the octagonal MG badge means it goes and steers like a Metro 6R4, then? Now that'd be a racing experience and a half...
Nope. To be fair on the re-born TF, it's not awful. That engine - all 134 horses of it - is pretty keen, and the steering is nicely weighted, having none of the over-assistance that plagues many a modern car.
Probably because it isn't one. But it's not satisfying to throw at a twisty road, and about as near to a proper racing experience as Jenson Button gets these days.
As well as all that racey nonsense, it's being sold as 'raw, MG fun' without the polished refinement of rivals.
Monstrous, rear-view mirror trembling scuttle-shake and a cramp-inducing driving position probably aren't what MG means.
The car itself could actually do well - packing air-con, an iPod compatible stereo and body coloured hard top into its £16,399 asking price. There'll be a stripped out budget one, too, which should be sub-£15k.
Just don't listen to MG and attempt the Pikes Peak in it.
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7 Comments for "MG TF LE500"
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Yeah I'd have... and I'm a bloke. It looks beter than the new mx-5 too.
no comment
same sh_t . different millenium ,yawn ,yawn. i don't think lotus are too worried about losing elise sales to rover ,or mx5 for that matter or bus passes .i think you know what i mean !. very ,very sad. and jezza said porsche were lazy designers. this aint gonna impress him one little bit. see ya
I still think MG and Rover should have united with Lotus. You could have Lotus making stripped-out performance racers, MG doing performance cars using Lotus suspension and the like, whilst still keeping luxuries like sat-nav and air-con, and Rover can do your cheap hatchbacks and sensible saloon cars like they usually do.
But no. What do we have now? We have Lotus putting their name to Protons in Malaysia, and a less-than-active bunch of orientals spending far, far too long to churn out even one new car, and when they finally DO make one, we find it's nothing more than reheated leftovers! COME ON! Stop messing about and build a new car properly!
First of all this TF LE500 is not very pretty. I don't like its two little nostrils at the front. It looks like a big grill with a band-aid over it. The interior seems to be all there but it is dull and gray. It's more on the side of burnt charcoal. It's very hard to think of why someone should by this car when there are MX-5's, VW's, Renault's, and a bunch of others to choose from. If a person wants a car for exclusivity, then this is it.
Can anyone think of anything good that has come out of China in the last century besides food? Granted they have turned re-engineering other countries products into an art form. However, I don't think this counts. Plus China is not a country I want to give any money to. I think I'd prefer the Malaysian owned British car Company.
We didn't buy it because it was rubbish! Get any MG Rover employees you have left to drive you around in their finest - the MGB, the SD1, The Queen's P5 - and teach you what made them great!
Bringing MG Rover back was your chance to make them 'do a GTi' and come marvellously back to form, but it seems that you're flogging more of the same!
Modify the old V8 to modern standards and throw that in if need be, buy back the rights to the Mini, and generally recapture the good old Rover we used to shout about, and maybe then it'll actually THRIVE again!!