MG Car Club of South Australia
MGC NEWS
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MGC mutterings from Richard Mixture, July 2016
ello, it's Richard here again.
Now the Director General of
Indoor Duties or ‘she who must be
obeyed’ as Rumpole use to say, won’t
go anywhere without her little RAA
card or plastic as it has now become.
Clearly she doesn’t trust my abilities
in the automotive department to get
her out of any sticky road side problems! But ... maybe it’s just those
nice young RAA gentlemen who can
attend to her needs.
During 2001 to 2005 the Phoenix
Group not only produced the ‘F’s and
‘TF’s at Longbridge but also sporting
saloons with the MG badge on the
bonnet. In fact today the hatch version, the ZR, is popular in the UK with
young lads with only a couple of hundred pounds in their pocket. With the
popularity of touring car races these
days, I wonder whether these young
drivers think that all sports cars have
four doors and four seats and that two
door sports cars are just a bit vintage.
Well, the ‘SA Motoring’ arrived the
other day, you know the Royal Automobile Association magazine, and I
noticed a green sticker on the cover
that said ‘Australia’s Best Cars, Winners inside’. Well, I flicked the pages
over and the best small car under
$35k was Korean, over $35 was German, best micro car, Japanese, best
light car, Korean, best medium car
under $50k, Korean, best medium car
over $50k, German, best sports car
under $50k ... best sport car! I better
read this. I looked for a photo and I
could not see a sports car until I realised their Best Sports Car photo was
a four door, four seat Ford Focus!
And what was the best sports car over
$50 you might ask? It was a four
door, four seat Mercedes-Benz A45
AMG! The rest of the ‘best’ cars were
Korean, Japanese and a Swede! Not
an Australian car to be seen. Do you
think there’s a trend here?
Will the next MG sports car, the Chinese one, be an SUV? That Benedict
Cumberbatch fellow is advertising the
new MG GS and looking a little like a
007 character but the MG GS is
hardly an Aston is it Bazz?
Why do so many cars these days look
like 4WDs or SUVs, including the best
sports cars selected by the SA Motor?
What does SUV stand for anyway? Is
it Stupid Ugly Vehicle? I’m sure many
of you have pulled up at a T junction
in your MG and have had to wait for a
Stupid Ugly Vehicle to get out of the
way before you see whether it is safe
to proceed. I guess in China SUVs
are the only car designs that the locals have ever seen, other than more
normal cars that just look like SUVs.
It’s just what is available over there as
the automobile is a newish concept to
them.
These days many youngsters
throughout the automotive world have
grown up thinking that SUVs are the
new “Kingswood”. Can you imagine a
telly program called the SUV Country?
I must be a little old fashioned but I
thought a sports car only had two
doors and two seats and are convertible! The last MG to fit this definition
left the factory over 10 years ago.
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