Did you hear about recent news regarding our beloved marque ?
Here's the place to post them up.

I shall begin with an easy source (mg-uk.co.uk):

REBORN, REJUVENATED AND READY TO ROCK MG IS BACK
".... The LE500 is a car to put MG back in the new car lists. The new TF LE will hold the fort until new and fully up to date MG Sports car arrives sometime after the end of this year. This new MG sports car will apparently be supported by three new MG saloons and all this activity seems to be being driven by a company that has the will and resources to make MG’s future the brightest it has been for a very long time...."

How are the plans for the continent / other parts of the world, anyone in the know ?

For some reason, Dreadnought Racing are using a LE500 for the 2009 season. They believe it will be competitive, why they need to strip a brand new car to race it is beyond me

Sounds strange to me as well, they could've taken the write-off instead

Do they know that nowadays LE500 hasn't got anything to do with 500bhp and the famous MGF Extreme/TF500. Dreadnought is known for racing their massive powerfull MG's....

So you think that Dreadnought is using the old MGF XPower 500 and not the new LE500 from China??

Ha Ha Crucioux, nice try. No, it's a new one.

How about this from one of our west Midlands guys, taken from the MGF Register forum :

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Bad news though - It looks like the 2nd Midlands MG franchise is going to be closing very shortly if it has not already ‘unofficially’ closed by tonight

NAC are ‘pushing’ the dealerships into installing £60,000+ of new diagnostic equipment above and beyond the level they already have or they will loose the franchise. With so few LE500’s shared between what is in fact quite a large dealership network this is not going to be an economic proposal for many of the dealers even if the franchise is part of a larger garage group. The local dealer has sadly informed Longbridge that they should come and collect the remaining cars they have at the garage as even though the cars have had plenty of interest the economics of selling them are now not so interesting.

Overall only 150 of the 500 cars have been sold so far even though the rumours said it was a lot higher number!! It sounds also like the production of the 500 cars is still not complete either. May be there are too many dealers at present with too few cars (or range) and with a launch of a soft top car in the autumn/winter time with a credit crunch happening, it does not create a good business plan for anyone. With a ZT ‘replacement’ to come out next, the dealers have more than a fight on their hands I think just to survive.

I hope this does not become a trend with dealers closing down and is just a blip here in the Midlands but been so close to Longbridge with so many F/TF’s around, if you can’t sell the LE500 here, it may be the tip of the iceberg of things to come? Hopefully, once the better weather arrives the cars will start to flow out of the dealers instead of the dealers flowing out of the MG family.

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In fact, I have still not seen a new one on the road yet, anywhere What hope does this show for the "production cars" will we see them at all ?

I will add, I am concerned about the amount of new LE500's for sale on the web-sites and even E Bay, it sounds to me like desperation. If they can't sell the well equipped LE will they ever sell a "normal" car ?.

Ouch that's gutting. What about the VAT decrease, should help a bit ?
I know about 2 or 3 members on .org who also posted pics of their LE 500's, so they are deffo there

Today I've read about a 12-13 K TF somewhere but I have completely forgotten which spec and which website it was from

Some of the dealers are still selling the very last of the 2005 at £12K or near to. Church Square Auto's still do.

The vat decrease has only dropped the price to just under £16K, it's only 2.5% after all (from 17.5% to 15%).

When searching for my car, I found a dealer in south Wales selling a Blue TF160 in a colour I didn't know. I phoned him and between us with his help on the paint code, it turned out to be Chagall. This colour only appeared on a 160 11 times (if I remember correct) and he only wanted £6K for the car with just 19K km's on the clock. That price could have been lowered if I wanted it, a shame really but I had my heart set on a 80LE in Pearl Black.

Earlier this week, there was an immaculate Goodwood Green 80LE 160 #1421/1600 for sale on E Bay for £5.5K with only 7520 km's on the clock from new. Prices are so low in the UK, let's face it, mine only cost £3950 with 38,000 km's and I got £4100 for the F with 122,000 Km's. So many bargains, if I were in your position, I would buy a nearly new TF and change it to lhd, with the Pound against the Euro you would get a bargain !

Herbie, you asked at the top of the page, plans for other parts of the world. Of course, this is my interest too, so I have asked the question several times while at Longbridge, the answers I have received goes like this :

There are no plans to export to Europe as all cars will be rhd. The only export market may be South Africa (rhd) this was back in 2006.

More recently (2008) the same answer but no reference to S. Africa.

I asked about importing to Europe from China (lhd), but there is no type certification there and a new car would need a full certification to be sold and licensed there.

It is.
Here we have some dreamer asking for 24k EURO for a 4 years parked new TF (20km)

see Adverts at mobile.de
sort by first reg. date at pull down field > Sortieren nach > Erstzulassung

As for the new TF sales area, it's a known fact that nobody aims for any EC approval.
Adrian, I still look for a photo of the LE500 type label from the bonnet

Thanks for the info Adrian. That's not very clever isn't it ??? I mean they can't just close the eyes and leave out the LHD market to distribute a successful sports marque ... I don't get it.

The LDH ones from china could've been the start ....
Here's a nice gallery btw., best viewed with IE just to make sure you can swap pages with the little arrows (pics from July '08):
http://photo.auto.sina.com.cn/picture.html#107273



I assume the chinese plate doesnt't help at all ?
http://www.sinaimg.cn/qc/photo/fitestnq ... 144826.jpg

yeeeks !!
Not due to the LE500 types (I have only one or two from Adrain, sent while they visited Longbridge the other year)

But from chinese "point of VIN"
LNPEF2BH47G000133

cause I have another from a German owner living in China
(dunno whether Simon S. reads already here.)
LNPEF2BH18G021913
Also it shows from the sequence figure difference, that they made about 20k MGTF since introduction until mid 2008.

20K !!!

Yap, 20k. The same figures were made in Longbridge 1996
So quite a few when looking at the Chinese population versus Europe

Anyway, another find from that VIN labels is:

Pos 9 of the VIN reffers to
1 = 88Kw (like TF120)
4 = 100Kw (like TF135)
... strange, eeehy ?

That's indeed an astonishing find this evening *wow* !

No ... but Dreadnought is always using powerfull cars, maybe they didn't know about the nw LE500 TF's and ordered the wrong one. Just kidding of course.

Regarding the very bad sales figures.... So sad, especially if you take into account that they started "promoting" several years ago. We could start wondering if we couldn't do any better, being real enthusiasts.

Sorry Dieter, I've missed out on this for you

I shall visit a dealer or two soon for you and get some pictures of vin plates. If I only knew somebody who actually had one.

By the way, Kasper and I visited his car on Saturday (it's on holiday in the bodyshop ) as there was no boot carpet in place (not much else either) I looked at his body number, he has an old F #8204 if I remember correct, guess what ?, no body plate, just two holes where the rivets should have been, but never were.

I knew you will see for *g*
- bonnet VIN plate photo .. (showing for sure the usual UK individual approval No)
- boot body No. photo with RHDF body p/n and sequence number

As for Kaspers #8204 and the missing plate in the boot:
That might be correct, cause that rear plate got introduced just in about that VIN range.
The earliest I have is from a LHD #7561 with body sequence No. 00007336.

How about Apple in Neopham or are they sold out ?
I've seen pics of a white (DROOL !!!) and an orange one but that was back in Sept '08.

Michael Edwards in Wigan might be a bit far away

Was great to meet you on sunday !