On Wed, 7 Jul 1999, Matt Pringle wrote:
> Hi there, I was just thinking about the state of new car design and
> construction (and the excesses of such) and was pondering this
> questions.
>
> 1) What would be the technical challenges of building brand new MG's (my
> preference would be for MGA's).
If you are talking production forget it, by the time they made them pass
crash tests and put in stuff like rolling windows and sound deadened the
soft top ( they would have to in order to make it 'comfortable' to the
average joe) the car would end up being nothing like it used to be.
Remember how slow and uncivilized the A is compared to modern cars. Also
take a look atwhat they did with the RV8. The original B's were a few grand
and theoriginal V8's were five or six (I think) and the RV8 was released with a
price somewhere near 40k (if you pretended that they would import them
here.
>
> 2) What could you sell them for ($)
>
It is very hard to say because of what would have to be done to them to
make them attractive
> 3) Would they sell in sufficient quantity to justify it.
I doubt it.
One other thing to consider is what we face with the RV8 and the MGF.
With BMW now owning the Rover group and consequently MG, the new MGs are
competition for their own Z3 and M series. Personally I don't think we
will ever see the new MG's here for this reason; the dealer base exists
but to import a car that you own just to compete with a car you make would
be foolish. I think that if there ever were a new A it would have the
smae problems. If you go to MG's web page you will see dealers in almost
every country except the US probably for these reasons and probably
because of the rediculous safety laws here. Unfortunately I don't think
that we will ever see these cars sold new in the US again, no matter how
attractive and no matter how much we want them.
James Nazarian
'71 B roadster
'74 BGT undergoing V8 conversion for autocrossing
|