Going back home after three years...
AROnline’s News Editor, Clive Goldthorp, has recently acquired a rare 06/06 MG TF 135. Here, he tells his TF’s tale.
Return to Longbridge: a TF’s tale
Going back home after three years...
I guess that, for me, owning a
two-seater roadster was unfinished business. You see, back in the late 1970s
and early 1980s, when my friends were driving MG Midgets and Triumph Spitfire
1500s, I was driving Alfa Romeo Alfasuds. I had four of them in succession and
the Alfasud still remains one of my two benchmark FWD cars – the other
being a much-missed and widely underrated 99/V Honda Accord Type R.
I ran a 90/G Lotus Elan SE Turbo for a while in the early 1990s but that, sadly, lived up to the old acronym for Lotus: loads of trouble, usually serious. Indeed, in my case, potentially fatal would probably be more accurate but that’s another story. However, while the Lotus had given me a taste for the drop-top experience, circumstances precluded me from considering a roadster again until last year.
I began evaluating my options in Spring, 2007 and narrowed them down to either an Alfa Romeo Spider or an MG TF. I realised that my budget of around £8,000.00 would buy a much newer, lower mileage, MG than an Alfa but, unfortunately (or, in retrospect, fortunately), an unexpectedly long stay in hospital and subsequent convalescence meant that my search for a suitable car had to be held in abeyance until this year.
However, in the intervening period, Keith had asked me to become AROnline’s News Editor, my local independent Alfa Romeo Specialist had closed following the Proprietor’s untimely death and two of my contacts in the local motor trade (and former Alfa Romeo/Fiat Dealer Principals) had informed me that their company was applying for the area’s new MG franchise. I was now clearly destined to buy an MG TF but still had to determine which version to choose!
MG Rover Group Limited made a number of modifications to MY05 MG TFs: the most fundamental change was the introduction of more compliant suspension settings but, of more interest to me, was the switch to a new hood with a heated glass rear window – the easily scratched plastic window on my Lotus Elan had always been an irritation. Unfortunately, MG Rover reportedly produced just 631 MY05 TFs before the company went into administration in April, 2005 – I reckoned that finding a low mileage (under 7500 miles) MY05 TF in my preferred colour choice of Starlight Silver might take some time.
AutoTrader.co.uk came to the rescue – my first search found an 06/06 MG TF 135 in Starlight Silver at Evans Halshaw Motorhouse in York on offer at £7991 and with 6067 miles on the clock. All the photographs accompanying the advert showed the car with the hood lowered but a quick telephone conversation with one of Evans Halshaw Motorhouse’s Sales Executives, Steve Lloyd, confirmed that this was, indeed, an MY05 version. I agreed to pay a small, refundable, reservation fee and drive over to York the following weekend. Steve added that a colleague had been using the TF but took the car off the road pending my visit.
My wife and I went to vet the TF in York on a rather damp and grey Saturday. We are both pretty used to appraising cars but were pleased to note that the TF had what was, in effect, a full MG Rover Service History and even came with a pair of smart, unmarked (and now, apparently, unobtainable), silver on black carpet mats embossed with the MG TF script. We had separate, accompanied, test drives and, after some discussion, agreed to buy the car.
Evans Halshaw Motorhouse agreed to polish out some small paintwork blemishes, bear the cost of some minor paint rectification work on the front bumper and arrange for the car to be transported to my home the following week. I therefore took delivery of the TF at the end of April, 2008 and have, since then, had the paint rectification work on the front bumper and two other small areas done. The MG badges at the front and rear of the car have both been replaced as their clear plastic coverings were beginning to crack. I have also had a black mesh grille fitted to the inner edge of the nacelle at the bottom of the rear bumper – these were, apparently, omitted from later TFs as a consequence of Project Drive.
The only other issue to have arisen so far concerns the two header strikers on the header rail above the windscreen into which the hood clips when raised – the paint on them seems to chip very easily. I am a real perfectionist (just ask Keith!) and so decided to buy a spare pair – I seem to have obtained the last two in stock in the UK and they were a noticeably different shade of black to the originals! I am now in the process of having both pairs repainted.
I have been in touch with my TF’s one previous owner who lived in Leeds. The gentleman concerned bought the car from Evans Halshaw Hyundai in Leeds (formerly Evans Halshaw MG Rover and now also an XPart AutoService Centre) who undertook the First Service in June, 2007. However, finding that he was not using the TF as much, the former owner part-exchanged the car at Mercedes-Benz of Leeds in March, 2008 and, as Pendragon PLC owns both that franchise and Evans Halshaw, the car was then traded out to Evans Halshaw Motorhouse in York where the Second Service was completed in April, 2008. My friends’ company has yet to be officially appointed as an MG Dealer but, hopefully, any further services or other work on my car will be done there.
We have three cars in our household so the TF has still only done a total of 7674 miles. My longest journey in the TF to date has, in fact, been last week’s trip to meet Keith for our visit to NAC MG UK Limited at Longbridge. You can read about our meeting with NAC MG UK’s Sales and Marketing Director, Gary Hagen, Keith’s Road Test of the TF LE500 and our Comparison Test elsewhere, but what struck me most about the company’s operation at Longbridge was the potential for the future. I returned home feeling rather proud (on a purely personal level) to be an MG owner and, as such, a stakeholder in what should be an exciting future for the famous marque.
Eleanor De La Haye, NAC MG UK’s Corporate Communications Manager, has, on occasion, mildly and politely admonished me for not waiting until the TF LE500 launch before buying an MG but, in our three car household, the additional cost would have been hard to justify – especially as we had already changed one of the other cars in the family fleet a few weeks before buying the TF. However, I have, of course, now driven a TF LE500 back to back with my TF 135 and reckon that, in different circumstances, a TF LE500 or, more probably, a new TF 135 would definitely be an option for me – the NAC MG UK-built cars demonstrate a commitment to quality which, if sustained, should rapidly enhance MG’s reputation.
I have, then, only one regret about buying my TF – this year’s unusually wet summer (even by British standards!) has rather limited the number of occasions on which the hood has been lowered…… Indeed, typically, Keith had just finished taking his action shots of me hurling the TF LE500 around a convenient roundabout when the heavens opened – I had forgotten that Eleanor had fitted the hood cover and just hope Keith did not take any embarrassing shots of me frantically removing that and raising the hood!
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