JustBritish

A new record high price for an MG sold at auction was set earlier this month, when a a pre-war MG K3 Magnette sold for 231,000 pounds, or the equivalent of $372,000, at H&H’s auction in Buxton, England. It wrested the high-price crown from a 1935 Magnette Airline Coupe sold in 2007 for 199,037 pounds.

It would take a book to detail the convoluted history of this car; in fact, a book has been written. Magnette-ised: The Pedigree of MG K3015-2 from 1934 to 2007, written by the seller, details the many changes the car has been through in the decades of its existence. H&H themselves described it as “the antithesis of a ‘matching-numbers’ car,” although it possesses an unbroken history as a genuine K3. The car is sort of like grandpa’s axe; the original frame was replaced with an unnumbered frame supplied by the factory, as was the original 1,086cc straight-six engine, and the body was changed from two-seater to single-seater, and back again. Further complicating matters is that the car’s original chassis, discarded in the late 1930s, has since been built up as a complete car.

There have been some lively discussions about the car’s authenticity on the website of the Triple-M Register, but the car’s long and colorful history has never been in question. For more, see the H&H website.

From: Hemmings Motor News

Rocketsports Racing (RSR) is scheduled to debut the Jaguar XKR GT2, the newest entry in the American Le Mans Series, at the famed Petit Le Mans at Road Atlanta this week.

In preparation for a full championship effort in 2010, the team plans to enter the last two events on the 2009 ALMS schedule using the track time for testing and development.

The car is currently undergoing extensive system tests at RSR’s East Lansing, Michigan facility and is being prepared for a performance evaluation and shakedown prior to Road Atlanta.

The team will be hosting a press conference on Thursday, September 24 at Road Atlanta to officially unveil the car and drivers for 2009, and tire partners.

RSR will face a flurry of competition in GT2 from the likes of Porsche, Ferrari, BMW, Corvette and others. Fourteen GT2 machines are currently entered for the 1,000-mile/10-hour road race classic. The Petit Le Mans at Road Atlanta will be held September 23rd -26th.

West Midlands car industry activists are poring over the fine detail of the government report into the collapse of MG Rover to establish whether there are grounds to bring a civil action against the so-called Phoenix Four, the executives who bought the car company from BMW for £10 in May 2000.

MG Rover watchers are said to be angry at the extent to which the Phoenix Four benefited personally while overseeing the demise of Britain’s last volume car manufacturer. They believe the report, compiled after a four-year investigation by two government inspectors, has opened the door to civil action.

“Company law on fiduciary responsibility is complex and unclear,” said Nick Matthews, an academic at Coventry University and car industry analyst for 15 years. “The inspectors agree that it is uncertain, particularly in respect of the deal to buy MGR Capital. What they have said is that the only way to establish for sure whether laws have been broken is through the courts.”

The inspectors devoted 100 pages of their 850-page report to the Phoenix Four’s investment in MGR Capital. This was the car finance joint venture with a subsidiary of the banking group HBOS, now part of Lloyds TSB, that bought the Rover cars finance and lease loan book from BMW for £313m in 2001.

However, the interest in MGR Capital was acquired independently of Phoenix Venture Holdings, the businessmen’s master company, which owned MG Rover. Their involvement in MGR came through the Phoenix Partnership, a private vehicle for the four and Kevin Howe, the man they brought in to run the car company.

The inspectors drew attention to the complex boardroom paperwork that accompanied the transaction and pointed out that company law is uncertain. “The points should rather, it seems to us, be aired if and so far as necessary in court proceedings with full legal argument,” they said.

Union leaders said it was not clear if they would lead a civil action, admitting there was unlikely to be much appetite – or funding – for ex-workers to bring a case themselves.

Richard Burden, Labour MP for Birmingham Northfield, said that it was “unacceptable” if , as the report claimed, the Phoenix Four had misled him and his constituents.

“The report makes the charge that when I and others raised questions about the structure of the company and the remuneration of the directors, at least some of the responses we received were misleading. If true, this is very serious. Not only will they have misled me as the local MP, they will also have misled my constituents and their own employees. That is unacceptable.

“The report also alleges that one of the Phoenix Four gave misleading answers to a committee of the House of Commons of which I was a member. If this is true, the directors must answer to that.”

There is a very nice and concise history of Rover cars over at The Telegraph. I am not going to reprint it here, but do take a look at the article for a trip down memory lane.

I just realized that I never published any story on the front page of JustBritish about my current projects. There are links to them over there on the right, but you may never have scanned down. Anyway, I am currently restoring a 1973 MG Midget and behind that waits a 1962 Triumph TR4. Both are pretty far gone and will take a good bit of work, although I personally believe they are not as bad as they look. My wife seems to differ with that opinion – as is normal.

My goal, whatever that is worth, is to have the Midget on the road before year’s end. It may not be perfect, but I would like to be able to drive it. After that, I need to start the slower and more expensive work on the TR4. The general hope is to have it ready to take to the road for its 50th birthday in 2012. This is a car that I really want right, so we will just have to see how that plan goes.

Please give me any input you may have on the cars and stay tuned for updates on the progress. And if you have car or restoration project that you would like me to feature here, drop me a line with the particulars!

Seen from Longbridge, MG Rover’s former base, the business’s industrial legacy five years on looks decidedly threadbare.

In one portion of the cavernous and almost deserted plant – once one of Europe’s largest – China’s Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation, owner of the rump MG brand, began making its TF two-seater sports car last year in small numbers for the UK and Ireland, using Chinese and European parts.

The company will not comment on production volumes, but acknowledges they are modest. “It’s not MG Rover numbers – it’s a single model we’re producing,” says Peter Brooking, marketing manager for MG Motor UK.

Most MG cars are now made in China. In 2006, a year after buying rights to the brand from MG Rover’s liquidators, Nanjing Automobile Corporation moved an entire production line from Birmingham halfway across the world in 4,900 shipping containers.

SAIC, which has since taken over NAC, also bought rights to some Rover models, made now under the Roewe brand.

Notwithstanding the much-diminished output at Longbridge – or the thousands of jobs lost when MG Rover collapsed – other marques from its erstwhile portfolio are thriving under different ownership.

BMW has expanded annual production of the Mini to more than 200,000 cars, from only about 12,000 a year before the Munich carmaker bought it. It now employs about 3,500 people, from a few hundred when MG Rover owned it.

Norbert Reithofer, BMW’s chief executive, announced plans last week to bring production of two new models to the brand’s plant in Cowley near Oxford in a move expected to create 1,000 or more jobs.

Land Rover, sold to Ford Motor and then to Tata Motors last year, has arguably also fared better under a new owner. It recorded its highest sales yet in 2007, as Ford was selling it.

Sales figures have wilted over the past year – down 38 per cent in the first half of 2009 on a year ago – but together with Jaguar it remains one of Britain’s largest carmakers.

“There is a strong argument to say that even if you take into account the sad demise of MG Rover, the UK motor industry is much better off than it was,” says Paul Everitt, chief executive of the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders.