The MG International Show : Stoneleigh Park kicks off the Events Season

Words and Photographs: Simon Davies/Pegasus Photographics

This year’s MG International Show at Stoneleigh Park in Warwickshire last Sunday featured the usual mix of Owners’ Club stands and an MG-biased autojumble sale. The first chance to meet friends from the clubs around the country and from across Europe in 2011 was, as usual, an added bonus.

Both the MG Car Club and the MG Owners’ Club had large stands, as did several of the Car Club’s Registers, which took the opportunity to promote summer events as well as selling MG regalia.

A number of major parts and after-market distributors were also present with the usual array of glittering, shiny bits, soft leather seats and interiors to tempt buyers wishing to improve their ‘loved ones’ for the coming season.

Attendance appeared higher than in 2010 – perhaps as a result of better weather as the icy conditions last year probably kept people away. There was a better atmosphere and traders seemed happier. One trader commented that they had only made two sales all day last year in comparison with over a dozen in the first few hours this year.

Cars on sale ranged from absolute ‘wreaks”, needing a lot of attention, to fully finished examples of pre and post war classics. Prices, as ever, ranged from the low thousands to well over £30,000. Everything could be sourced for complete rebuilds of almost any MG: wood frames, pre-war bonnets, sub-frames, wings and wheels, piled in heaps, together with nuts, bolts, washers of all sizes and interiors for every type of MG in boxes, on tables and on the ground, with sellers open to negotiation on prices. Seats could be recovered, re-padded or simply replaced with new or second-hand examples from scrapped cars.

All the MG enthusiasts who attended were, as usual, able to make purchases or ask for advice about anything and everything relating to their MG. Indeed, all in all, the day proved to be enjoyable, informative and a good start to what promises to be another great year on the MG front.

Clive Goldthorp

18 Comments

  1. Give them a break – if the MG6 had been there they’d be getting a shoeing for displaying their all-new MG rebirth product in a cow shed surrounded by beards and secondhand MGB wings! Wake up and smell the tea.

  2. @richard Rose
    Maybe from you they would. I think everybody else would recognise that, when you’re trying to get a dead brand back off the ground, speaking to the few people who still give a toss about it isn’t a bad place to start.

  3. Poor old MG UK – can’t do right for doing wrong.

    I am an MGOC member and can tell you that the MG6 is being watched very closely and MG UK have been keen to involve the Owners’ Clubs. However, I can understand why a show like this – as good as it is – is not appropriate for any manufacturer to launch an new model at. After all, it is to all intents and purposes a “classic” car show and autojumble. You don’t see Ford, GM or any of the German crowd doing that so why do you think SAIC Motor would?

    Give them a break and let them get on with assembling cars at Longbridge again before they get hacked off with all the negativity, stick two fingers up at the UK and go back to producing everything in China.

  4. @Wilko
    Perhaps not, but how much credibility outside of the “enthusiasts’ clique” we belong to is it going to give SAIC Motor/ to say in their next press release, “The new MG6: MG Motor UK launch the MG6 in a Warwickshire cowshed next to a pile of secondhand MGF seats”?

    What does that say to the majority of the car-buying public?

    Anyway, as I said, damned if they do and damned if they don’t.

  5. @Ross A
    That’s not the case. I don’t want MG Motor UK to fail but I fear it will fail, simply because SAIC Motor just doesn’t seem to be serious about investing in the UK – it all just seems to be a token effort.

    Compare SAIC Motor’s treatment of Longbridge with how much commitment Tata Motors has shown towards Jaguar Land Rover. It’s chalk and cheese. Additionally, Tata Motors didn’t shut down JLR’s factories and ship all the equipment out to another country as happened with MGR.

    I am an MG/Rover enthusiast and want to see the MG badge displayed on good quality, British cars, designed in the spirit of the marque. However, having spent the past several years waiting with baited breath for something meaningful to happen, I’m increasingly resigned to the fact that it never will.

  6. Firstly, Tata Motors didn’t shut down the JLR factories (although they came close to doing so with one of them) but nor did they have to restart the brand from scratch either.

    SAIC Motor’s decision to keep Longbridge open for business has cost a lot of money – we may never learn exactly how much…

    I’m not surprised the engineering and design work is done here but I am actually surprised Longbridge was reopened at all – to my mind you can build cars anywhere as long as the resources are available.

    Secondly, MG Rover is dead. Please get over this.

    The MG brand as it is now is a re-invention with a respectful nod to the past. I have said this before but SAIC Motor need to kickstart everything. Work out what people want in order to take it in the direction the business needs to go in, then the rest will eventually come. More models will be available and a sports car is a no-brainer.

    HOWEVER, they would need to establish the business case for everyything they do. It isn’t going to happen all at once…

  7. Ross A :
    MG Rover is dead. Please get over this.

    I am over it – that’s kind of the point. I have reluctantly come to accept that the story is very probably over.

    Start genuinely building these vehicles in the UK and I’ll be interested. However, sticking an MG badge on some Chinese cars is not (for me, at least) a continuation of the BMC/BL/AR/MGR story – it’s just a sad insult to the past.

  8. @Wilko
    I’m not sure the comparison between SAIC Motor and Tata Motors is fair – Tata Motors bought a fully-functioning car-making facility but SAIC Motor had to revive a husk of a factory and try and get it working again. The playing field was by no means level.

    I think the quality will come eventually. However, we need to give it a chance (and I don’t mean by showing blind loyalty) and it won’t happen overnight.

    SAIC Motor will reap what they sow if the cars are crap and they don’t act on feedback.

  9. Wilko :

    Ross A :
    MG Rover is dead. Please get over this.

    I am over it – that’s kind of the point. I have reluctantly come to accept that the story is very probably over.

    Start genuinely building these vehicles in the UK and I’ll be interested. However, sticking an MG badge on some Chinese cars is not (for me, at least) a continuation of the BMC/BL/AR/MGR story – it’s just a sad insult to the past.

    Sticking an MG badge on a Japanese-designed Honda and calling it an MG ZS is a continuation BMC/BL/AR/MGR. What’s the difference? The ZS was great car, especially the V6 version, but its DNA was Honda.

  10. Simon Woodward :

    Wilko :

    Ross A :MG Rover is dead. Please get over this.

    I am over it – that’s kind of the point. I have reluctantly come to accept that the story is very probably over.
    Start genuinely building these vehicles in the UK and I’ll be interested. However, sticking an MG badge on some Chinese cars is not (for me, at least) a continuation of the BMC/BL/AR/MGR story – it’s just a sad insult to the past.

    Sticking an MG badge on a Japanese-designed Honda and calling it an MG ZS is a continuation BMC/BL/AR/MGR. What’s the difference? The ZS was great car, especially the V6 version, but its DNA was Honda.

    Correct me if I’m wrong, but not only was the MG ZS quite a lot more than a “rebadged Honda”, it was also built entirely at Longbridge. I think that makes the MG ZS quite a different kettle of fish to the MG6 and certainly to the MG3.

  11. @Wilko
    The MG ZS was a Honda Civic designed by Honda and apart from a boot on the saloon, K-Series engines and exterior/interior trim variations and suspension tweaks, pretty much still a Honda.

    They may have been some small input into its design by Rover but, and as we all know, it metamorphosed into a MGZS/R45 but, when all and done. it was basically a Honda. That’s why Honda retained the intellectual property rights to the design and demanded it back after MGR’s demise.

    Yes, it was built at Longbridge from panels supplied by Honda in Swindon and, at the moment, the MG6 is built from kits but, other than that, I can’t see the difference.
    The MG6 uses a variation of the K-Series, sold to the Chinese months before MGR collapsed and it has had design input from UK-based Engineers at Longbridge.

    I apologise for my previous barbed comments and I did not wish to imply that people such as yourself are xenophobic. I was generalising the vibes I was getting from some of the remarks made on various posts on the subject.

    I would love to see British-designed, British-built, British-owned cars coming out of Longbridge but the fact is not everything we see is what it’s supposed to be and, for a number of years before its demise, this was very much the case at Longbridge.

  12. @Wilko
    Again, I apologise for my barbed remarks – sometimes, in the heat of the moment (battle!), things are said and done which may offend when that was never my intention. I am a passionate ‘Brummie’ who just wants to see cars rolling out of Longbridge again and agree that I’m optimistic but, who knows, stranger things have happened.

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