Citroen XM Forum

messerschmitt owner wrote:Let's get it right - the BX is an Anadol/Reliant design, briefly used by Volvo for a concept car and eventually being sold to Citroen. It is as Citroen as the MGF is a Rover (See the Honda Beat history)

Ahh so its a proepr citroen then... the MGF project predates the Beat, and so do the initial designs sketches, then the whole project was shelved as the powers that be thought there was no room for a moder small 2 seater convertable. Honda did get a good look at the work that had been done. Then the MX5 appeared and BMW dusted down the MGF project. One day we will realized MG Rover were not as rubish as clarkson and co lead us to belive

zaphod wrote: One day we will realized MG Rover were not as rubish as clarkson and co lead us to belive

never a truer word spoken!

MG rover made some lovely cars and the K series powertrain engine is my favourite engine of any ive worked on, and we all know which car is cheapest to run, anyone ever bought rover/mg parts? very cheap is an understatement and they are easily available, more so than citroen or ford and other mainstream manufacturers who are still in business!!!!!! Real shame they are no more.

D

Unfortunatly MG/Rover were the object of much press attention in their late days. Sales and profits were on the up untill the phoenix 4 pension scandal. In fact things were looking better and that they were in fact pulling it off, and if they had managed that I suspect the pensions would be entirely justified. After that sales went into free fall.

One thing many have forgotten in the early 90's Rover were doing rather well and the cars were very well thought of and sucessfull, it was only after the BMW takeover that they became a bit of a joke, this was largely down to BMW not allowing Rover to compete with their own cars, and pushing them as old mens cars, hence the no adverstising of the Vitesse, and 200 BRM and NO MG derivatives of the Rovers, did you ever wonder how the MG Z cars appeard so quikley after BMW left? it was because they had been ready from day 1 of the bubble 200 and the 400 mk2. Rovers total failure to replace the '89-'95 200/400 series with anything convinceing also did not help.

I was once in conversation with a Rover Technical Manager being shown an MG SVR and when I said they needed to dump the old image and cars and get a more youthful image, he agreed and said it was their aim but they were frightened of alienating the core buyers.

Actually they needed to go back to their old image.. that which they had in the P6 era, with that car they invented the market that the germans now have, the SD1 would have continiued this had red robbo and his mates not killed it almost at birth. In fact late in the day the SD1 did regain the image, with the vitesse and by that time the SD1 was a well sorted car, that hammerd the germans in touring cars