by David Finlay (17 Aug 01)

Alison all but came to a shocked standstill as we left the station and she discovered what car I'd brought. "Are we going in that?" she said.

"No, no," I assured her as I opened the doors of the MGF. "This is just what I happened to have with me. I'm just about to pick up something more convenient."

"Oh," she said. And a few minutes later, when we stopped at the CARkeys compound, she added, "are you sure we can't take this?"

It hadn't been part of the plan. Alison is a professional mezzo-soprano, or as she prefers to call herself "an opera singer with a low boredom threshold", and we were about to make a 150-mile round trip to take part in a concert. There would be no instruments to carry (she having of course been born with hers already installed, while pianists are never expected to provide their own pianos for clear and obvious reasons), but we would have to take concert clothing with us, and I didn't think the little MG would be up to it.

What I was forgetting was that female opera singers tend not to wear very much when performing, and Alison's entire costume had fitted without any difficulty into a small bag. That left my own suit, which fitted into the luggage compartment without having to be crumpled up. Well, not much, anyway. Nothing a quick shake wouldn't fix. And it would be nice and warm when I put it on, since no part of the MG's boot is more than a foot away from the exhaust manifold. The insulation is very good, but if you plan to take any chocolate with you it's always best to carry it in the passenger area.

Notebooks Out

"It sounds very sporty!" Alison commented, this being part one of her critique after she had appointed herself Passenger Correspondent of CARkeys for the trip. It was during one of the very few overtaking opportunities which arose on the outward run. We were travelling along roads which twisted and turned for miles on end, and at this stage we were doing it at a fairly busy time of day.

A strange and infuriating effect I've noticed on such journeys is that the slower a car is travelling, the closer it will be to the rear bumper of the car in front. Inevitably, what happens is that you find six of them all doing 35mph in a 60mph limit, and you're lucky if once in a dozen miles you get a chance to erupt past all of them (or take advantage of a gap suddenly appearing).

Of course, if you're feeling particularly brave, you can start overtaking at the first hint of a straight, paying no attention at all to the oncoming truck and hoping it will all sort itself out. This is what I saw the guy three cars in front do twice in quick succession, but in addition to having a sense of self-preservation I didn't attempt it, because I had no intention of having my left eardrum turning to powder as a well-projected top C scream emanated from the passenger seat.

The second and concluding part of Alison's road test concerned the small and rather fiddly sun visors, which in my opinion were given far more self-congratulatory spiel at the original press launch than they deserved.

That was several years ago, of course, and in all that time it had never occurred to me to look for a problem which Alison identified immediately, namely that the mirror on the passenger-side visor is well off-centre, which makes the application of lipstick a wearisome chore. I'm almost certain this information has never appeared in any other press report of the car, so remember where you read it first.

That's The Car, Then

So much for the road test. For the rest of the trip most of the conversation that took place on board the MG was music industry gossip, a lot of it based on how several performers had reached huge levels of popularity almost regardless of how talented they were - for example, the conductor (without question very talented indeed) who could put on a concert of exceptionally difficult music and still be guaranteed to fill a large hall, simply because he, not the music, is the main draw.

It's all down to the marketing, we agreed, and of course that applies every bit as much in the motor industry too. There are motoring journalists who will happily spend hours telling you that MG Rover's press service is one of the least effective in the business, but you can't deny that the MGF has been very well marketed over the years. It may not be a true sports car, but everyone thinks it is, that's the important bit. The publicity generated by lending one to Anthea Turner probably had more effect on sales than all the serious press coverage the car has ever received.

For our concert (which went well, in that nobody booed or asked for their money back) we were lucky to be able to park right outside the front door of the venue, and from the amount of stares it received the MGF seemed to be a useful attraction. In fact, it occurred to me that it might be worth arranging a national tour and another MG, until I realised that our modest baggage had already stretched the carrying capacity to its limits, and that if we needed to take anything else with us we would have to have a chase car as well.

Before I'd come to that conclusion I mentioned the idea to Alison. "It would be great," I said. "We'd get a lot of publicity because it's not the kind of thing we'd be expected to be going around in. It would be like the motorcycle and sidecar on the Two Fat Ladies TV programme."

Whoops. Operatic eyebrows were raised at that point, and I had to do some serious back-pedalling as I explained that it was the concept of the car I was thinking about, not the shape of its occupants. Singers can be a touchy lot, you know.

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