Rare Rides: The 1994 MG RV8 – Small Roadster, Big Engine

Corey Lewis
by Corey Lewis

Today’s Rare Ride combines a traditional roadster design from the Sixties with updates from the Nineties, and uses an engine from somewhere in between.

Let’s learn more about a hodgepodge which is the very limited production MG RV8.

To understand today’s subject, we’ll take a quick stroll back to 1962. Said year saw the introduction of a new roadster from BMC, the MGB. Unlike older body-on-frame sports cars, the MGB used a modern monocoque structure, and filled it with older components from 1950s MG cars. The new design was just the thing to sate the public’s desire for a lightweight, affordable roadster. MGB was almost instantly successful domestically, and crucially for BMC’s cash flow, sold well in the United States.

The MGB was updated slowly over the years, and a GT hatchback version was added. For a short while there was also an MGC that featured an inline-six engine. BMC became British Leyland, time marched on, and by the late Seventies the MGB was sold beside a more modern offering from Triumph, the TR7. Management felt the MG was eating up TR7 sales, so they cancelled it after 1980. The reality was the classic British two-seat roadster market had dried up at that point, and it made little difference to TR7 sales. Things were quiet the rest of the decade, until a little offering from Japan came along in 1989: the Mazda Miata.

Suddenly two-seat roadsters were cool again, and Rover wanted a piece of the action. There wasn’t much money to develop anything new, so the brass turned to British Motor Heritage. The subsidiary was created in 1975 to supply parts for classic British cars, but branched out to body shells in 1988 with replacement MGBs. MG Midget bodies were added to the production line in 1991. BMH could theoretically start small production of updated MGB bodies in short order, and on the cheap.

But some changes were in order to make the ancient MGB Nineties-worthy. A light suspension rework occurred, but left the basics (including the leaf springs) intact. Front brakes were discs as in all previous MGBs, though drums remained at the rear. Underneath, a limited-slip differential appeared. The body shell was updated to look more modern, but retained the hood and doors of the original MGB. Power arrived via the 3.9-liter Rover V8 as seen in the Range Rover. MG was familiar with such an engine placement, and had done a similar one before: They used the 3.5-liter Rover V8 in the MGB GT V8 of 1973. The 3.9 in early Nineties guise made 190 horsepower, and pushed the RV8 to 60 in 5.9 seconds.

The production of the newly created RV8 was piecemeal. BMH made the body shells, and sent them to the Rover plant at Cowley (it makes Minis now). Cowley applied the paint, then the bodies went to Longbridge (1905-2016) for assembly. Built on their own line and largely by hand, the RV8 featured real wood trim, luxurious Connolly hides, and many ruched details.

As a result, the old-new car was expensive, felt old fashioned, and was not popular with reviewers or consumers when it went on sale in 1992. Still intent on competition with the Miata, Rover exported the majority of the 1,983 RV8s to Japan. Only 330 of them were reserved for UK sale. The RV8 was churned out slowly until 1995, at which point the 32-year-old design was finally retired.

Today’s 1994 example is at auction right now in England. In a nice metallic green with tan hides, the price is £3,000 as of writing, and its reserve is not yet met.

[Images: seller]

Corey Lewis
Corey Lewis

Interested in lots of cars and their various historical contexts. Started writing articles for TTAC in late 2016, when my first posts were QOTDs. From there I started a few new series like Rare Rides, Buy/Drive/Burn, Abandoned History, and most recently Rare Rides Icons. Operating from a home base in Cincinnati, Ohio, a relative auto journalist dead zone. Many of my articles are prompted by something I'll see on social media that sparks my interest and causes me to research. Finding articles and information from the early days of the internet and beyond that covers the little details lost to time: trim packages, color and wheel choices, interior fabrics. Beyond those, I'm fascinated by automotive industry experiments, both failures and successes. Lately I've taken an interest in AI, and generating "what if" type images for car models long dead. Reincarnating a modern Toyota Paseo, Lincoln Mark IX, or Isuzu Trooper through a text prompt is fun. Fun to post them on Twitter too, and watch people overreact. To that end, the social media I use most is Twitter, @CoreyLewis86. I also contribute pieces for Forbes Wheels and Forbes Home.

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  • Oberkanone Oberkanone on Sep 16, 2020

    Eligible for import to USA.

  • Yankee Yankee on Sep 18, 2020

    I had both cars mentioned. In my younger days, I had a 1977 MGB, 4-speed, British racing green. Looked great sitting still, which is what it did best. Probably the worst car I ever owned. It was poorly built and painfully slow. My girlfriend at the time had a stick shift 3-cylinder Geo Metro and I couldn't keep up with her on the climb through the Blue Ridge Mountains despite my dual carbs and straight exhaust. Fast forward many years later and I owned a Miata for 5 years which was one of the best cars I ever had. The Japanese are masters at reverse engineering. They did exactly what they did with American VCRs a decade before: took an existing concept, analyzed how they could make it better, simpler, cheaper, and more reliable.

    • See 2 previous
    • -Nate -Nate on Sep 19, 2020

      @Yankee ; Well yes, the '77 had the smog choked engine, the cam timing was retarted by 4 degrees from 1974 on wards, a fairly simple task to remove the timing chest and replace the (worthless and sort lived) single row timing chain and gears with the DuPlex gears & chain from a pre smog era one cheap parts and boy howdy did it wake them up . MGB's were never supposed to be fast, they were _SPORTS_CARS_ ~ a thing few Americans under stand nor enjoy . No way even a bone stock '77 would get dusted by a Metro unless it wasn't properly tuned . I agree they're better looking than going fast cars but I was often told my '67 MBG GT was "! really fast !" when I know is was a plodder, I just like driving slow cars quickly . The primary fault with older British cars (Motos & trucks too dammit) was lack of concern by management of any initial build quality . Similar to GM's Delphi debacle recently but far more pervasive . Even if you're building out of date technology there's never any excuse for shoddy works . -Nate

  • CanadaCraig You can just imagine how quickly the tires are going to wear out on a 5,800 lbs AWD 2024 Dodge Charger.
  • Luke42 I tried FSD for a month in December 2022 on my Model Y and wasn’t impressed.The building-blocks were amazing but sum of the all of those amazing parts was about as useful as Honda Sensing in terms of reducing the driver’s workload.I have a list of fixes I need to see in Autopilot before I blow another $200 renting FSD. But I will try it for free for a month.I would love it if FSD v12 lived up to the hype and my mind were changed. But I have no reason to believe I might be wrong at this point, based on the reviews I’ve read so far. [shrug]. I’m sure I’ll have more to say about it once I get to test it.
  • FormerFF We bought three new and one used car last year, so we won't be visiting any showrooms this year unless a meteor hits one of them. Sorry to hear that Mini has terminated the manual transmission, a Mini could be a fun car to drive with a stick.It appears that 2025 is going to see a significant decrease in the number of models that can be had with a stick. The used car we bought is a Mk 7 GTI with a six speed manual, and my younger daughter and I are enjoying it quite a lot. We'll be hanging on to it for many years.
  • Oberkanone Where is the value here? Magna is assembling the vehicles. The IP is not novel. Just buy the IP at bankruptcy stage for next to nothing.
  • Jalop1991 what, no Turbo trim?
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