January 24^th, 2004

MG Rover turns tables over

V8-powered ZT 260 gives Europe an American rasp - and blows a British raspberry at Bavaria

Spot the difference? Neither did we - from the top: new MG ZT 260, '01 MG ZT 190, and '99 Rover 75

Rover's Longbridge factory, now home away from home for Ford's 4.6-liter V8 engine (photo: BBC)

The Rover 75's market run began after its spring '99 launch. This 1999 production model is pictured with UK Trade Secretary John Byers (left) and then-BMW AG CEO Joachim Milberg (photo: BBC)

A quietly elegant sedan with fewer touches of chrome than the 75, ZT 260 adds a slightly more aggressive sense of purpose to the traditional sloping front and rear ends, and the long front and rear overhangs

0-60 in 6.2 seconds, and 155mph - the numbers support the idea that ZT 260 is a little on the heavy side. It's a little claustrophobic, too, but piles on the charm to make up for it

For its part, the Rover 75 will get a midlife refresh as shown here, in an attempt to differentiate the comfort-oriented, Rover range...

... from MG's more sporting line-up (ZT 260 pictured). A more outwardly aggressive ZT 385 follows in the UK this summer

There is not much that pleases us more than when an established authority such as the BMW 3 series continues to vanquish all comers even in its twilight years.

Yet there are greater rewards in life. Going through the gears in an early '70s BMW 2002 tii along a lonely country road is one; belting an outgoing Mustang Cobra down a dragstrip is another.

The two experiences mix about as well as 'Freedom' and 'Fries' do in a sentence - yet from the rush of adrenaline they give us, we would never know any difference in sense between two very different sensory experiences.

Apparently, there is one. "American cars are built for America, most should stay there, and the UK market will be as unimpressed with the next crop as it was with the last," predicts John Coates in his 'Insider Dealing' column for Autocar, January 13^th, 2004.

Europe has long been the promised land for roads which seem to end somewhere in Connecticut, leaving America as something of a wasteland of well-engineered (for the most part) but dull, straight freeway.

As such, most Europeans are generally unimpressed by American muscle, and the Stateside popularity of enthusiast European cars such as said 3 series have forced both the Americans (think Cadillac's CTS-V) and the Japanese (Lexus IS300 and Infiniti G35) to re-think their strategies.

Why, then, would the Mustang V8's brute of an engine (whose specific output, noted Autocar, January 13^th, 2004, is "significantly bettered not only by every other petrol powered product in the group, but also by the likes of the Daewoo Matiz) have found a home in a production line in Britain?

Ladies and Gentlemen, a new expression of British eloquence and American brute force has arrived - courtesy MG Rover, Britain's last British-owned mass manufacturer. The MG ZT 260 has British magazines waxing lyrical about an engine they once would have referred to as an 'archeological lump' (or something to that effect), and - respectfully - Mr. Coates might want to reconsider.

"It's a proper V8 engine... instant aural relief to ears tired of the muted murmur of four and six-pot motors," gushes Top Gear, January 2004.

Unfamiliar with MG Rover? Perhaps our 'BMW-Rover story' (in PDF format) might help.

MG Rover is, in brief, the rump that was taken over by the Phoenix Group in mid-2000 for - literally - a few dollars ($15.32, to be exact). Seeking to divest itself of what the media then regularly referred to as the "English Patient," BMW sold Land Rover to Ford and gave John Tower and his consortium the task of reheating Rover Cars' aging 25 hatchback and its Honda-based (from some generations ago) 45 midsize;

of figuring out how to best place Rover's front-drive 75 large sedan, engineered under BMW's guidance and finding itself straddling across two categories (premium midsize and entry-level luxury) in the best Rover tradition,

and of attempting to find the money to not only keep the operation going, but to develop much-needed new product.

MG Rover's innate engineering ability has rarely been in doubt, both in modern times (think MGF and Rover 200, and how unlikely both these cars and the Rover 45-based MG ZS have been), and in the much earlier days of the '50s MGA sports car and the 'Auntie' Rovers of the '60s.

Certainly, the MGB - the last MG with which Americans were familiar - grew long-in-the-tooth, but the magnificent accomplishment that was the Rover SD1 Vitesse of the early '80s was a superb drive (if somewhat prone to breaking down).

There is, however, only so long that a company can live on a reputation for turning a sow's ear into a purse, even as its purse strings are decidedly tight.

Or is there? This plucky little organization, now proudly advertising the horsepower of its MG-badged cars on their rump-mounted badges, is at it yet again.

We have always liked the Rover 75, whose spring '99 British Motor Show launch was unfortunately overshadowed by then-BMW CEO (now VW Chief) Bernd Pischetsrieder's doom-and-gloom comments about Rover's workforce. The car's interior was (as it remains) an odd mix of new and old - with BMW switchgear and heritage dials - but it drove well and added a certain something to either of the two categories BMW mistakenly sold it in, at different price levels.

Like Top Gear, who put both cars on its cover, we compared it in our minds to Jaguar's more expensive, simultaneously-launched S-Type in the sense that both were designs intended to evoke Britishness. For us, only one was successful (although Jeremy Clarkson questioned its Britishness at the time, noting that "Oswald Boateng would never, ever drive a Rover 75"). The 75 was - and is - a quietly elegant sedan with a few touches of chrome, traditional sloping front and rear ends, long front and rear overhangs, and an aggressive (this will change from this year's model onward) front fascia that both recalled Rover's past history and gave the car a sense of visual purpose.

More purpose was added with MG's ZT line, launched in 2001 along with the ZR and ZS to give Rover's 75, 25, and 45 customers (respectively) sportier, MG-badged alternatives with tuning worthy of the MG name.

First in the ZT line was the MG ZT 190. Now comes the MG ZT 260, a rear-wheel-drive Rover 75 powered by Ford's 4.6-liter V8 mated to a 5-speed Tremec. Less all-out capable than a Subaru Impreza STi or Mitsubishi Evo VIII, but with the magically flawed dimples that follow an Alfa Romeo 156 GTA, the ZT 260 presents itself as an American with time spent in a British boarding school. The result is less staid than a BMW 330i SE or Volvo S60 T5, but less expansive than a Lincoln LS V8.

Like the CTS-V, and the E39 BMW M5 before it, ZT 260 makes every attempt to hide its potency. Indeed, the add-ons which do exist appear to us to be exactly that: added-on. Drivers will note a  slight loss of steering feel, and of space for the dead pedal, but those are the only real giveaways.

Look deeper, however, and this is no warmed-over Rover. If you thought Cadillac's CTS underwent major surgery to boast its Corvette Z06 engine from under the hood of the CTS-V, the front-wheel-drive, transverse-engined 75 has been so thoroughly reworked that one might wonder how they managed to retain its proportions in the ZT 260.

Open the hood - or bonnet, but we will not quibble (in the words of Basil Fawlty, "we are all friends, now") - and a real engine, "just oily bits and whirring belts," as Autocar's Adam Towler put it, stares back at you.

Then, of course, step on the gas and enjoy a wave of torque restrained by neither traction control nor stability control (neither is available, praise the Queen - at least until MG Rover unnecessarily engineers them), but by the feel of a well-balanced chassis that is equally happy slithering its tail around in the expansive American format, or sitting within a similarly expansive neutral zone which, ironically enough, the Europeans seem to be best at widening.

At 155mph, this car's top speed symbolically mocks its ex-German owners' penchant for self-enforced speed limiters regularly set at five miles lower. It will cruise with a more relaxed gait than most of its ilk, courtesy long gearing.

On the negative side, this is one heavy European car, and its 6.2-second 0-60mph time may not be enough for some to swallow the gas mileage. Stay tuned, UK readers, for the summer's supercharged ZT 385, which doubles the original ZT's 2.5-liter-V6-driven 190 horsepower.

If ZT 260 were an industry executive, it would be Swiss-born, General Motors Vice Chairman Bob Lutz. Intriguingly enough, Top Gear's Jeremy Clarkson notes in a January test of the Lutz-imported 2004 Pontiac GTO (the UK'S Vauxhall Monaro) that "there's an American burble... but there's nothing even remotely American about the way the Monaro corners." Clarkson loved the car, calling it "wonderful... if you have an electric blue Subaru now, or a banana yellow 911, and fancy something a bit different next time round, you shouldn't give a (!) for anything else."

The 256-horse ZT 260 delivers European poise from American muscle, and British understatement with a Stateside all-conquering feel. Why it has taken a persistent underdog to deliver this combination is a question Cadillac would probably not take up as readily as one might think. After all, the CTS-V's slashes and hard angles appeal to a decidedly more modernist crowd than the ZT 260's soft curves and evocative headlights.

Think of MG Rover's latest creation as a performance-scaled CTS-V, styled by Buick but with a relaxed, Lincoln feel and aural characteristics, and you will not be too far off. It is a true pity that the chances of seeing the ZT 260 on our shores is a much further prospect.

Congratulations are in order to MG-Rover for finding the wherewithal to re-engineer the car so effectively - and, basically, for being bold enough to produce a car like this. The latter comment applies to GM, too - and, continually, to TVR's Peter Wheeler, who likely would have thought up this scheme a while ago.

We suspect that the little British company will have no problem moving its 1,000 units annually, and that - as we noted last year - Pontiac will sell its 18,000 GTOs with similar ease.

Both will lend their spiritual home some deserved respect. America gave, MG Rover has delivered a winning combination, and - paradoxically - we fear the only loss will be ours. One wonders how much would be made of horsepower-per-liter statistics in our own press if the donors of the ZT 260's heart, as a collective, could experience what its British parents have done with it.