I copied your text to the the MG Cars Enthusiasts Club Bulletin Board
(http://www.mgcars.org.uk/) and got the following reply:-
From: Graeme Bishko phygbb@leeds.ac.uk
This is a paraphrasing of comments made by Stephen Cox at the MG Car
Club F register meeting last weekend. Stephen Cox is an employee of
MG Car Company which is a subsidiary of Rover.
The MGF will not be sold in the USA within 6 years. 6 years is the
expected life of the model so the MGF will never be sold in its
present configuration in the USA. There are two main reasons for
this.
It was known from the start of the project that the car would not be
sold in the US. The market is very tough and MG did not want to do
what they did with the MGB and lose money on every car sold.
Production was set at 16,000 units per year and it was recognised
that it would take twice that number to satisfy the US in addition to
the rest of the world. At this stage (1 year into sales) it would
cost a huge amount to double production and doubling production would
be the minimum step up in production. MG will not even consider this.
The second reason (which is a supporting reason for the original
decision not to go into the US) is one of legal problems with a
dealer network left over from the Rover Sterling sales attempt in the
80's. This problem is not insurmountable but contributed to making
the US market even less attractive.
BMW's Z3 had absolutely nothing to do with the original decision. BMW
had no connection with Rover back when the production levels were set
and any information that MG might have had on the Z3 back then would
have been very sketchy. In fact, in the UK, MG feels that they are
picking up sales from the Z3 waiting list. There were a number of
serious enquiries at the motor show from both prospective Z3 and Merk
SLK customers. They even consider it likely that after driving the
superior ( :-) ) F, some of these people may cancel their Z3 orders
and stick with the F.
Currently the only MGFs in the US belong to Ford and are kept in
Detroit. MGFs were climate tested in the US but those ones are no
longer there. The car is pretty much US spec already but there would
need to be some reworking of bumpers and re-testing of materials. MG
don't consider that it would cost very much to make the necessary
changes.
The long term plans are for MG to return to the US. This would be on
the back of a concerted movement of a number of Rover models and will
not be within the lifetime of the F.
Obviously Stephen wouldn't say any more about future plans for MG but
it was satisfying to hear that there are some!
graeme
Disclaimer: The above constitutes the gist of what was said to me
(and others) last Sunday. I was given permission to repeat all of
this and< to attach Stephen Cox's name to it. If any of this is
untrue (or I misunderstood Stephen) I will withdraw it as soon as I
am made aware of this.
PaulH
73 Roadster (HD&H)
75 V8 (DD)
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