Auto News – Daily Last Auto News

Last Auto account – MG’s abstruse leash of stars! New TF, Midget and Cayman battling apparent as artist opens up on aggressive plan

Take a attending at the tantalising approaching that never was – but could still be! Auto Express, calm with www.aronline.co.uk, has baldheaded clandestine images of a leash of MG sports cars that was getting readied aback in 2005.

The project, codenamed X120, saw the Longbridge bulb in the West Midlands alive on a new Midget, a backup for the TF auto and an upmarket coupé to battling the Porsche Cayman. Although the models were canned if the aggregation went broke 5 years ago, they could accomplish a acknowledgment with the aid of Chinese investment.

Our pictures appearance the aboriginal illustrations of the cars, by artist Lee Mitchell. All were to be based on the aforementioned belvedere – a adapted adaptation of the absolute TF’s. Power was set to appear from a development of the K Series engine, which would accept been offered with outputs of amid 120bhp and 180bhp, and claimed impressively low emissions.

The disadvantage of application the TF’s belvedere embodied itself aboriginal in the programme, if it became bright the roadster’s compromised active position would be agitated over to the models. According to Mitchell, had MG added £2million to the project’s £50million budget, it could accept acclimated an all-new aluminium tub – but there artlessly wasn’t the money to accompany it. â??It was a shame,â? he explained. For almost little investment, we would accept had an amazing mid-engined belvedere that convalescent the packaging problems.

â??The Midget was hobbled as it bare to backpack over doors from the TF, but anybody admired the design.â?

As the programme developed, the money ran out, and the operation was bound scaled down. Mitchell recalled: â??There was every ambition to yield the cast aback to the US as MG Rover absolutely bare to acquisition new markets for its products. The business case relied on US numbers to about-face a profit.â?

Mitchell thinks the cars had success accounting all over them, and abjure the actuality they never accomplished production. â??I acquainted we were authoritative history and it’s a benevolence it never came to fruition.â? However, with new MG and Roewe models on the way, there’s every adventitious the MG sports car ambit could return.