Rover Australia made its MG Operations Manager and MG Technical Manager
available for a presentation and a nice BRG MGF available for
demonstrating, at our Canberra MG Club meeting last night.
The MGF is due for release here early March at a price of $AUS45,000
($US35,400) for the base model and $AUS53,000 ($US41,600) for the up market
variable valve timing model. This puts the base model about $AUS2,000
cheaper than a Mazda MX5 (Miata to the US). To get the car on the road
there would be about another $2,000 of taxes, fees and compulsory insurance
on top of these figures. All cars sold here will have air conditioning as
standard (an option in other markets).
Rover has 300 cars stockpiled for the release and expects (they say) to
sell about 1,000 in the first year and about 300 a year (same as the MX5)
in subsequent years. Rover has established a dealer in the five major
capitals in Australia and (as with Lexus) will truck a replacement car down
to any customer outside those centres, for them to use while their car is
trucked back to the major centre for service or repairs.
Impressions are that it is a pretty car with some impressive performance
figures. Less impressive is the need to use 96 octane unleaded petrol
which costs about 7cents a litre more than the unleaded petrol most cars
use here (the compression ratios of the engines are over 10:1).
Thought you might be interested.
Graham
Graham McCann Rivett, ACT. Australia
gmccann@pcug.org.au
06 2889055
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