MG EX-E - MG's Lost 170mph Supercar

as British Leyland faced its impending privatization during the mid-1980s a great sense of optimism would arise from The Firm being released from the shackles of its previous tenure under government control and thus was met with a vast array of promising Concepts which it brought to fruition could have seen the respective brands of the upcoming Rover Group experience a major Resurgence on the global stage one of the more notable examples being the mgexe a proposed 170 mile an hour Supercar which would have been among the fastest models on sale at the time but would end up being simply an engineless fiberglass one-off by the time of the British Leyland privatization in 1986 the mg Mark which had been brought into the Leyland conglomerate under the British Motor Holdings aspect had been essentially stripped pair of all the promise it had shown when the British Leyland merger was enacted in 1968 with its slew of perky roadsters and small sports cars such as the MGB and the having been contorted and disfigured beyond all proportions as part of the company Management's fanatical desire to meet American Safety legislation until eventually with the sudden plummet of traditional sports car sales during the late 1970s following the hot hatchback Revolution all of mg's original cars were withdrawn from production in 1980 and the name was placed onto slightly tuned performance-orientated variants of British Leyland's regular family models including the mg Metro the mg Maestro and the mg Montego with the mg Mark in Dire Straits a solution was needed to help give the brand back its identity as a renowned sports car manufacturer in order to avoid it being wound up in its entirety as per the likes of Triumph and Morris during the first half of the 1980s the remedy presenting itself in the form of a concept car presented at the 1984 London Motor Show dubbed the Honda hpx or Honda pilafarina experimental a bubble top styling exercise conducted by the Italian firm at the request of Honda who needed an exhibit for their take a trip into tomorrow display the free hand given to pin and Farina resulting in a stunning and futuristic design which featured an advanced composite body and a wedge-shaped profile the car's most notable acid being its windscreen which evolved into a transparent perspex through this bubble top design also acting as an air brake when activated at a certain speed while instead of using doors access was gained by lifting the roof seeing the hpx concept car royax the then styling manager at British Leyland who also happened to be the proud owner of a mid-engine Ferrari 308 GT4 at the time decided that the mg brand should be revived by way of a mid-engine sports car concept that will be displayed at the upcoming Frankfurt motor show acts creating a bubble Top low slung wedge-shaped design that owed many of its Aesthetics to the Honda while a Lotus Esprit borrowed from Austin Rover Group product planner Tony Burton was used as a dimensional reference model to form the clay mock-up the project dubbed the mg exe being developed with every intention of potentially seeing this machine go into full-scale production the visual goal of the project was to create a sports car of similar size to that of the Ferrari 308 but with a completely Unique Look the mg brand being chosen for this model as it was the only dedicated sports car label left in British Leyland's Arsenal after the axing of Austin Healey and Trump Leyland's chairman Harold Musgrove being incredibly enthusiastic about the program as due to him being an aviation Enthusiast he saw parallels between the car and the Striking looks of the General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon jet aircraft the design manager for the exterior of the project been Gordon's scared who was accompanied by a small team of designers comprising graduates together with X Chrysler Europe and Peugeot designer Jerry McGovern in terms of its design the mg exe was a technical tour de force with a drag coefficient of 0.24 equivalent to a modern day Tesla Model S while Spen King designer of the Range Rover brought across an aluminum space frame that was bonded together the body being comprised of self-colored unstressed plastic panels although at the time the large Greenhouse style canopy was considered Troublesome when it came to Cooling and would have likely required an extremely powerful air conditioning system in order to keep the interior conditions tolerable other aspects of the car's incredible technological aspirations including active suspension parking radar LCD digital instrumentation and heads-up display remote Central locking a rudimentary navigation system automatic lights a key card operated Locking System rain sensitive windscreen wipers and a hands-free operation for the car's inbuilt cell phone in terms of mechanics the concept model was placed onto the chassis of one of mg's Group B rally cars the Metro 6r4 upon which was mounted a midships a three liter naturally aspirated V6 that was Loosely related to the Cosworth dfv and was capable of producing 250 horsepower and though some power was lost on its way through a manual all-wheel drive transmission this was compensated for by the car's ultralight chassis and body the potential performance of This Magnificent machine being a naught to 60 time of around 4 seconds and a top speed of 170 miles an hour almost as fast as a Lamborghini Countach lp400 while try for adjustable aerodynamics could shed drag further or add downfalls for cornering thanks to a double Wishbone suspension active damping and anti-lock brakes the exe project started initially with good progress but was quickly slow due to issues when trying to introduce a design that was as light as possible this problem eventually overcome when ax took a cue from the 308 and had the Bonnet service be below the wings to create a lighter look and improved view forward from the cockpit as have been so admired in the Ferrari the final model ultimately emerging as a full-scale mock-up clad in fiberglass and painted silver which was presented to Harold Musgrove only days prior to the upcoming Frankfurt Motor Show and with his Blessing the car was allowed to be presented at the venue and was accompanied by promotional sketches covering the design process which had been drafted by Jerry McGovern and other members of the design team as a group effort in the end the mgexc was revealed to the masses at the 1985 Frankfurt Motor Show after being put together by a small group of Leyland technicians on the side the appearance of this incredible car wearing an mg badge taking the viewing public completely by surprise this highly ambitious model with all the technical Wizardry proposed coming from the same Builder who only five years earlier had discontinued the MGB of the 1960s and was now bemoan for having its name placed onto slightly modified versions of Austin's family cars the motoring press of the time applauding the concept and expecting that based on the enthusiasm for the Metro 6r4 rally car mg would have no trouble enticing potential buyers with the exe should it be pushed into production sadly while there was an incredible amount of enthusiasm for the proposed mgexe following its unveiling at the Frankfurt Motor Show with one Austin Rover executive reportedly stating that the car could have been used as an entrant into the proposed replacement for Fia Group B rallying known as group s Harold Musgrove had serious reservations as to marketing the project and felt that such a niche product had far too many downsides to justify a barnstorming attempt by mg to fight its way back onto the stage of high-speed supercars even though the chassis and mechanical specifications complemented the already existing mg Metro 6r4 as well as the fact that at the time supercars after over a decade of diminished sales and low interest following the 1973 all crisis were about to hit back in a huge way thanks to the likes of the Porsche 959 of 1986 and the Ferrari F40 of 1987 sparking an all-out war between the various sports car manufacturers to create the fastest production car in the world leading to a phenomenal Revival for cars of this Ultra exclusive Market bracket that pervaded through the 1990s and into the new Millennium the mgexd if it had gone into production not being the fastest of the bunch but certainly a contender for one of the finest had it reached sales with all its styling and Technical Innovation present essentially mg's equivalent to the now legendary Jaguar xj220 that would follow in 1988. sadly with a seed of doubt now placed the mgexc project remained as a single fiberglass prop and even with the formation of the new Rover Group a year later in 1986 the mg mark would remain relegated to Metro's maestros and montagos until being revived on its own dedicated models first in 1992 with the limited production MGR V8 and later with the MGF of 1995 the latter of which proved to be a huge sale success across Britain and Europe and could potentially have seen similar commercial victories in the United States and Canada only for the model not to be marketed in North America at the insistence of parent firm BMW who feared the mg would steal sales away from their own Roadster the BMW Z3 as for the mgexe itself while the project never went beyond an engineless mock-up the concept did live on in many indirect ways the Jaguar xj220 which was being built by a small team of Jaguar Engineers during their spare time taking a lead from the mg by utilizing the 6r4 Metro rally car engine as part of the production models which would attain a top speed of 212 miles an hour and a not 60 time of 3.6 seconds making it briefly the fastest production car in the world although the use of the Metro engine in the xj220 would be one of the car's many controversies as customers who had laid down 50 000 pound deposits were expecting the machine to be fitted with a V12 power unit as per the original prototype leading to much legal wrangling as buyers attempted to avoid their contracts and withdraw their deposits while the styling of the mg exe in the form of its spiritual progenitor the hpx would play a significant role in the creation of Honda's prestigious NSX or new sports experimental a performance car which after six years of development would emerge in 1998 is one of the finest mid-engine sports cars ever created to summarize the mgexe was a concept not lacking in promise as with its many technological and mechanical facets having been shown to great effect at the Frankfurt motor show the incentive was clearly present for British Leyland and its successor the Rover Group to take a risk and push the car potentially through to full-scale production though how the model would have performed on the market against the likes of the Lamborghini Countach and the Ferrari 328 is a matter of debate as in consideration of the many promising Concepts brought to fruition under British Leyland a pervasive lack of fit and finish with the company at the time leading to significant unreliability which continued to smear the firm's name meant the project would have likely suffered a similar fate to that of Rover group's attempted return onto the U.S market known as Sterling which was Notorious for falling well below sales forecasts due to its reviled quality fault despite the fact that on paper at least it was thoroughly competitive as is mg's promising Supercar would remain only a one-off and even though the company would venture into the realm of modern high performance machines with the later mgx power SV of 2003 which itself was based largely off the underpinnings of the early akwale Mangusta of the late 1990s one cannot forget the firm's first attempts to reach for new levels of sporting prowess and track the mark out of its ailing reputation another promising what-if scenario that would fall by the wayside and miss the boat with regard to the rapid Resurgence of supercars during the latter half of the 1980s truly yet another missed opportunity for British Leyland

Channel: Ruairidh MacVeigh

Views: 72,733

Keywords: car, cars, automobile, auto, bus, truck, motor, motor vehicle, saloon, estate, compact, sports, roadster, transport, road, heritage, historic, MG, MG EX-E, EX-E, Rover, Rover Group, British Leyland, Leyland, MG Metro, MG Maestro, MG Montego, MG RV8, MG F, MG 6R4 Metro, Group B Rally, Rally, Group S Rally, Ferrari 308 GT4, Lamborghini Countach, Lamborghini, UK, Britain, British, Ferrari, Honda, Honda HP-X, HP-X, Honda NSX, NSX, Acura NSX, Great Britain, United Kingdom, Frankfurt Motor Show, Prototype

Id: 4mtjx9KK9Gw

Length: 11min 32sec (692 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 21 2023