Now here is a car that you don’t see every day, since oddly enough, most of them went to Japan: a mid-nineties MG R V8 convertible. It looks rather like an MGB on steroids, or perhaps one left out in the sun for too long. There is a bit more to it than that of course, and supposedly only 5% of its parts interchange with its ancestor. And it did act as a bridge between the classic and modern MGs, which allowed for a revival for the storied MG brand in the 1990s, such as it was.
The MG R V8 story begins with the demise of the much loved MG B roadster in 1980. What started as a reasonably modern design in 1962 was looking rather dated by 1980. Interestingly, there was still buyer demand for the B, but the closure of the Abingdon factory brought things to an end. The often-troubled British Leyland was not in position to replace the B or any other niche car. The Triumph Spitfire also ended production in 1980, with the TR7/TR8 following in 1981. It was the death of the great British sports car era. An interesting side note is that there were a few attempts by outside parties to restart B production, including even Aston Martin.
Perhaps we are getting a bit too far ahead of ourselves and should first mention the two previous bigger engine versions of the B, the MGC (CC here) and the MG B GT V8 (an alphabet soup name if there ever was one). A quick summary shows that the MG C was created to help fill the gap after the demise of the big six powered Austin Healey 3000. MG engineers tried a few engines but ultimately settled on the C-series engine from the Austin 3-Litre saloon. The engine is essentially an updated version of what was found under the bonnet of the 3000. It is a big heavy lump of an engine and made a 145hp with gobs of low end torque. The sheer size of the engine required a swap to torsion bar front suspension. The result was more of a grand tourer than big wooly sports car like the 3000 or light and sporty number like the B. Rather maligned back when it was new the MG C is easily sorted these days with proper tires and suspension set up.
The MG B GT V8 was the next step in expanding the performance capabilities of the B. While several aftermarket specialists had been wedging the Rover V8 into the B for a number of years it took until 1973 for the factory to do it. Oddly it was only into the GT hatchback body style. While a V8 engined MG B seemed natural for the North American market it never happened. The official line was a shortage in supply of the V8 engine. More profit in Rover luxury saloons than sports cars I suppose. Another theory is they didn’t want to compete with the V8 powered Triumph Stag which was also a part of British Leyland Motor Corporation at the time. No doubt gas shortages and fluctuating prices at the time didn’t help its case. The MG B GT V8 enjoyed rave reviews but modest sales thanks to premium pricing and production ended in 1976.
After the demise of the B the MG marque didn’t disappear but the MG octagon found its way onto badge engineered versions of Austin saloons like the Metro and Maestro. There were body kitted and turbo versions of each sold in small numbers but nothing to really getting a MG traditionalist’s blood pumping.
Then back in 1988 it was decided to put the old MG B body shell back into production to cash in on the booming classic car restoration market. With over half a million sold the B was the perfect candidate for getting a heritage shell made. Though expensive up front the new shell could be an excellent investment to restore a rusty car and had decent success as well as reminding Rover Group (what the remains of British Leyland was now called) executives that the MG marque still had value despite being a bit abused. The Mazda Miata MX-5 had also been introduced in 1989 to great success showing there was still strong demand for a traditional roadster.
The MG R V8 was developed using a much modified MG B as the base. The engine was a Rover V8 with a five speed gearbox similar to the earlier Rover SD1 and Triumph TR8 as well as contemporary Range Rovers.
In 1993 the MG R V8 was introduced at the Birmingham motor show with very positive response to the return of a sporting MG and the retro styling. Very high quality materials were used though out the interior and the hand built nature of the car caused price to be a major issue at £26,000. With its future in real jeopardy the stars aligned when a spot at the Tokyo Motor show was available. It was a hit in retro mad Japan of the time and had over 1400 orders just at the show.
Japan actually took the bulk of the R V8 production. Almost a whopping 80% or 1583 out of 1983 cars went to Japan which also snapped up a good number of Rover Minis as well. The car was a panned in the British press for being rather old fashioned which, of course, it was under the skin. Despite the 185hp fuel injected engine the rear suspension was a live axle suspended by leaf springs. At least the front suspension no longer used the B’s lever shocks but instead used more modern telescopic dampers (tube shocks). On the plus side straight line performance was rather impressive with 0-60mph acceleration being clocked at six seconds. Top speed was a 135mph.
Believe it or not these are Porsche 911 headlamps.
I talked to the owner of this one briefly and he sourced it from Japan after a largely fruitless search in the UK. Canada’s import laws allow most vehicles fifteen years or older to be imported. He mentioned that he knows of four others in Canada.
While the R V8 was probably not a money maker for parent Rover it did pave the way for the more modern MG F which appeared in 1995. The MG F was a whole different car with a mid engined four cylinder engine and Hydragas suspension but still evoked the classic MG styling. I think it is safe to say the R V8 is probably the ultimate variant of the B and likely to be a sought after classic for years to come.
We got a few of these new, not to mention the ex-JDM used import versions that have rolled in over the years. I really, really wanted to like the R V8 when they came out, but they don’t quite do it for me. Something doesn’t quite work with the exterior styling – but I love the interior! Strange they went so upmarket with the interior but didn’t bother with power windows though. Wasn’t there an issue with the amount of windscreen the wipers cleared? I seem to recall 3 wipers (a la Jag E-Type) had to be fitted in some countries to meet swept-area regulations. Anyone remember?
The B had the three wiper set up in the 70s at least in North America.
A neat, wonderful car (pity it wasn’t available in the US) and an unfortunately reminder where the native-owned British car industry has fallen to: Very small, specialist manufacturers. Which is a grandiose way of saying what Jeremy Clarkson calls, “Five guys in a shed.”
Hard to believe that thirty years ago Britain actually had a viable (but failing) auto industry. Now there’s nothing more left than seven foreign owned nameplates and a bunch of guys in a shed – most of whom have their backs to the wall and are facing liquidation any time now.
If I ever knew of these I had forgotten. Nice job.
Wow – a great find of an incredibly rare car. It is a shame that they could not find a way to get them to the US. I would imagine that they could have sold quite a few here during the fat years of the 1990s.
great writeup. i didn’t know about these. i think the five guys in a shed paradigm also explains the lack of resources in coming up with a right hand drive version for the rest of us.
it’s an interesting variant. looks a little like a scaled down bentley. neither design really does it for me. i’ll take me an mgb or mgc in the gt variant.
As soon as I saw the photo I had a sickly feeling in my stomach and said to myself, “looks like an MGB that’s been left out in the sun too long. Then I read the text and knew immediately that I spend too much time on this blog.
Being the purist that I am, you already know I rather hate this. But quite a find; I’d long repressed its existence.
I’d love one of these. The wheels and maybe the lower “ground effects” need to go though, way too dated.
I was 16 when these were launched and I remember thinking back then how this car epitomised everything that was wrong with the British car industry at the time. I haven’t changed my mind.
This always struck me as the Rover Group chasing the heels of the MX-5 by raiding their historic parts bin & hastily assembling a “retro” (read, “so old it’s come back into fashion”) sports car, to flog for far more than it was worth, to people with no sense.
It saddens me that a local industry which had prided itself, and thrived on innovation only 30 years earlier, had fallen to this by my youth, and has since (quite rightly) ceased to exist.
Far from being the ultimate classic, in my opinion the RV8 is almost sadder than the contemporary badge engineered MG-Austins and MG-Honda-Rovers. Almost.
Well, in fairness, the RV8 was conceived at the point work was beginning on the MG F, which was a proper modern sports car. Rover knew that the F wasn’t going to be available for a while, and the RV8 was an answer to the question, “How can we remind people that MG is still a sports car maker until the F is ready, without spending a lot of money we don’t have to spare?”
I think the ultimate downfall of BL/Austin Rover was not so much that they didn’t value innovation as that they didn’t recognize the value of their niche cars and brands. The mentality throughout the 70s was “If we can just find one or two big mass-market hits, we can worry about the other stuff later,” which led them to abandon whole marques that still had quite a bit of brand equity, whatever their shortcomings. In hindsight, BL might have been better off building up its niche products and leveraging them into progressively higher-volume segments, as BMW did, but that admittedly would have been a tough argument politically until after reprivatization, at which point it was probably too late.
Fair point. I suppose what still saddens me under that is that the holder of pretty much all Britain’s historic sports car marques, was in a position that it had to rush out a parts-bin special in response to the MX-5 while it pulled its metaphorical trousers up & developed a proper response (how successful or otherwise a response the F was, being a separate issue).
The recurring themes in histories of BMC/BL/Austin-Rover/Rover Group over at aronline.co.uk (who are far gentler in their appraisal of our failed motor industry’s past than I) are politicking, in-fighting and continual second-guessing. Personally I think those were its ultimate downfall. I agree however that mismanaging the many storied niche brands which came under its dubious custody over the years, certainly contributed.
By the late 80s and early 90s products like this were just highlighting the group’s terminal decline.
Well, I wouldn’t argue with any of that, but I do think that the central theme of a lot of BMC/BLMC/BL/AR politicking was the conviction that greater volume would solve all their problems (combined, by the mid-70s, by the hard-to-fathom notion that they could dramatically increase sales volume while all but abandoning the U.S. market). That was a politically popular idea, but we can see how well it worked out for them…
Looks like Turtle the “cool car.”
I saw somebody’s effort at an RV8 GT at a show earlier in the year
Wow, I’m indifferent to the convertible R V8, but that’s a seriously nice effort. I could love that.
A couple of minor clarifications. First, the Austin-Healey 3000 was not particularly large — it was “the big Healey” only in comparison to the Sprite and Spridget. (The 3000 was all of 4¼ inches longer than an MGB on a 1 inch longer wheelbase; both cars were about the same width, although with the big C-series engine the 3000 is naturally heavier than the B.) Second, the engines in the MGC and 3 Litre are not identical, as people commonly assume. Internally, both sixes are about the same, but there are a lot of differences in accessories and external components. You can put a 3 Litre engine in an MGC, as a lot of people have done, but as I understand it, it takes a fair bit of adaptation.
As for the 3000, the six-cylinder MGB was supposed to be offered in both MG and Austin-Healey forms, although the differences between the two versions would have been limited to grilles, trim, and equipment, much like the Spridget. The Austin-Healey version was finally canceled at the insistence of the Healeys, who thought the whole project rather hopeless. After that, BMC suggested the Healeys figure out a way to use the 3.9 L Rolls FB60 engine from the Princess 4 Litre R in the 3000 instead. The Healeys created a couple of prototypes of the Rolls-engined Austin-Healey 4000, which briefly looked like it was going to replace the 3000 in 1968. The project was canceled around the time of the Leyland merger.
One of the odd things about the MGC was that most contemporary reviewers complained that the seven-bearing six felt less torquey than the specifications would suggest. It had a rather heavy flywheel and its breathing in stock form was probably a step back from the earlier four-bearing version in the Austin-Healey 3000. Now, modern MGC fans will tell you that by adding a lighter flywheel and making some changes to the intake manifold and carburetion you can really bring the engine to life, but the stock version was widely criticized for being neither happy to lug nor particularly willing to rev.
I was lucky to get a close look at a Healey ‘4000’ recently. Three were indeed built and they all survive, one in the UK, one in Switzerland and the third in the States.
The body was widened by 6″ and the engine provided was a tuned 4 litre Rolls-Royce IOE, as used in the underated Vanden Plas. Widening the body produced a very handsome car, arguably better proportioned than the ‘3000’ The one I came across was an automatic, with at least 175bhp it would have made a great boulevard cruiser and could have been popular stateside.
Being from the US, it’s no surprise I never knew of the R8’s existence before today. I think the styling is quite gorgeous, especially the rear end from the side. Damned near perfect classic lines/proportions reminiscent of a 70’s Corniche.
I’m surprised there’s so much dislike for this car–sure, it’s very old-fashioned and more than a bit cobbled-together, but I’ve quite liked it ever since I discovered it (on the internet, of course, as we never got them in the USA). It’s a classic MG shell with a few updates and a V8, kind of a niche car and certainly expensive but I don’t see why that’s a bad thing.
I guess those who think all retro styling is bad would probably lump this in, but.. I look at it as simply a sort of “factory custom”.