Rover and out? Not yet!
It’s about time that we were moving our bargain MG ZR on, but a trip to Roverfest has made it even harder for us to part with it
THE STORY SO FAR Miles driven 364 Total mileage 80,367 What’s gone wrong Nothing, for a change
DAVID SIMISTER Ever wished – perhaps at a set of a traffic lights – that your four-pot hatch would suddenly sprout a V8?
I definitely did the other weekend, because I was attempting to sneak the Classic Car Weekly ZR into the V8-themed shenanigans at this year’s Roverfest rally. I had a list of feeble excuses about DA03 WCL being a Rover-designed, Roverengined car bolted together at Longbridge, but in truth it’s neither a Rover nor something with the requisite number of cylinders. Perhaps I should have stuck its temporary Rover 25 grille back on!
Although the ZR’s suitability for the nation’s biggest Rover bash was based on the flimsiest of excuses, I still couldn’t resist dragging it out of semi-retirement for another moment in the spotlight. Ever since its appearance at MGLive! ( CCW, 5 July) it’s been taking life easy, just occasionally popping out on errands, but we’ve found it hard to let go of its keys while work continues on our Puma. A potential new owner keeps pestering us to talk prices, but we keep finding excuses to take our baby hot hatch out for another run.
Which is how it ended up taking yours truly, a boot full of camera gear and the mysterious ‘sports casual’ jacket that’s resided in our £500 chariots for about six months (nobody on the team will confess to owning it) over to Wroxall Abbey for the Roverfest finale. In the end, I needn’t have worried, because our ZR was happily waved through the gates and given a spot on the main showfield, alongside the classics brought along by the 200/400 Owners’ Club.
The pristine Rover 200 Cabriolet parked next to us picked up a show award because its owner had travelled from France to join in the fun; our rather scruffy MG, which I hadn’t even had time to clean before the 90-minute dash from Peterborough, wasn’t so fortunate. It did manage to attract a lot of attention in the event’s opening hour, but I suspect that might have had more to do with the issues of CCW – featuring our Rover V8 group test – that I’d left on the bonnet for showgoers to pick up and read.
Our plucky MG might not have been able to compete with the P5Bs, SD1s and TVRs for outright wow factor at Wroxall Abbey, but it definitely impressed with its faultless performance on the journey to Warwickshire and back. The road connecting CCW’s home city of Peterborough to the A14 was closed for repairs, and the inevitable diversion spat our British Racing Green slingshot on to a wonderful sinew of grey asphalt that I didn’t know existed. The little MG came to life as the road ducked and dived its way across the Northamptonshire landscape, more than making up for its lack of straight-line oomph with its admirable poise through the twisty bits; I may sometimes wish that our little MG had a V8, but there’s absolutely nothing wrong with the way this car corners.
Work might be continuing apace on our Puma and we’re preparing to wave a hugely reluctant goodbye to our big Mercedes S280, but we might just find another excuse to hang onto the MG a little bit longer…