Thats the only reason you'd have a v8...that noise!!!
The MGZT v8...which is the one you are referring to was a short run experiment by rover. They converted the whole car to RWD and chucked in a mustang v8....
I must point out several discrepancies in that Clarkson video.....
He pointed out the the river 216 had 103bhp.....thats wrong. The 1.4 has 103bhp....the 1.6 rover engine had 111bhp and the honda one was around 115bhp.
He said that he took the turbo from the MGZR....which IS a 200 series rover....the engines are basically identical with a little fettling. There was no turbo version.....Unless you count the L-series Diesel.
Its just full of incorrect information.
I have a big soft spot for rovers and have owned 6 different ones.
None of them have blown headgaskets.
4 of those were petrols, all the 1.4's and all were great engines. The 1st one i had was an older 214sei with a new mgzr engine in (same engine, but with newer head casting), this one was dyno'd at 126bhp....with just a catback exhaust and airfilter. very quick and revvy engine.
The diesels were great, the L-series was very tunable and robust. I had mine up from the original 105bhp to 130bhp with an adjustable tuning module made by an ex rover engineer. Was reasonably priced, and wired into the Pump and MAF.
Anyway....back to the MG6...i've been following this for a while now.
Most of the driven reviews i've read say the chassis is very well made and handles great...the engines, while a little bland, are more than capable and a diesel will be available eventually.
In a comparison with the ford focus, the materials were not quite up to scratch....but being british designed, the styling is contemporary and stylish.
I doubt you can paint the chinese MG6 with the same brush as any original rover or MG.
Its a completely new vehicle.
As for the original rover's engine reliability.
Headgasket failure was down to poor alloy head castings and the water way restriction they caused.
As long as they were never run dry and people kept on top of the coolant levels etc then there would not be a problem.
The issue is that they were high performance engines, built to very high tolerances, and most people are not as careful to check their coolant every week.
Or if it was low, still drive for a couple of miles to get home etc.
this resulted in overheatings, warped heads and high repair bills.
Stronger gaskets helped. but that was not the root of the problem.
Many attempts to improve the castings saw in an eventual increase in reliability under normal maintainence conditions.
The later models were mostly fine if looked after correctly
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Topic: Chinese MG from Longbridge anyone? (Read 2455 times)