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

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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.

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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.”

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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.

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