Team RLR and MG Head to Silverstone

Chinese-owned MG Motor U.K., the British sports-car marque, is to halt production of its TF sports car for six months, not resuming until March next year. Sales of the low-volume sports car, the only vehicle now built at the once-massive Longbridge factory in England, have been slow through the year. The midengine two-seat TF sports car started life as the MGF in 1995 and was Britain’s best-selling sports car for years. It’s now sold in limited numbers in the U.K. Just 265 were sold in the first nine months of this year, although September was the revived brand’s best month yet, with 65 TFs finding buyers. The company also has orders for all 50 copies of a new 85th-anniversary limited edition. According to newly appointed sales and marketing director Guy Jones, the small-sports-car market is down 30 percent this year […]

This story from the San Francisco Chronicle…. Richard Haas is a marketing consultant based in the Peninsula. A Bay Area native, he was brought up in the United States, South America and Europe. I grew up with British motorcycles and cars – BSAs, Triumphs and MGs. My first motorcycle was a 650 side valve BSA with sidecar I bought with an older friend. I remember my Mom’s black MGA fondly, and my first college car was a Sunbeam Alpine. One day in 1996, my future wife and I were driving past a gas station on Camden Avenue in San Jose when we spotted a green MG Midget with a “for sale” sign. We called the guy who had left it there – it was a repo (thanks to too many traffic tickets), and he wanted $1,600 for it. It looked […]

Full-scale car production resumed at Britain’s Longbridge auto plant under its Chinese owners on Friday, reviving the factory which was mothballed when MG Rover went bankrupt in 2005. Full-volume production of the two-seater MG TF LE500 sports car was underway at the facility in Birmingham, Britain’s second city, giving a much-needed boost to the country’s motor industry. After 100 years of vehicle production in Birmingham, the traditional heart of Britain’s motor industry, about 6,000 jobs were lost when historic car manufacturer MG Rover collapsed. Nanjing Automotive Company (NAC) bought MG Rover’s assets for 53 million pounds in July 2005. They were taken over last year by Shanghai Automotive Industry Corp (SAIC). “We have all worked extremely hard to meet our commitment to commence production of the MG TF in August,” said MG UK corporate communications manager Eleanor De La Haye. […]