One last hurrah: the 1994 MG RV8

We go for a spin in one the few MG RV8s in North America

Only three of these are currently in Canada, with zero original examples believed to be in the U.S. Photo by Jay Ramey.

It's tough to imagine the British car scene in North America without the MGB, which remains a popular starter classic and is available in every price range imaginable--and some price ranges that aren't. The iconic MGB was in production from 1962 until 1980, an entire era that saw relatively few changes introduced to the well-proven design.

The marque itself was overseen by three corporate parents during those 18 years on the line: BMC, British Motor Holdings and, finally, British Leyland. The basic roadster design spawned the MGC as well as the MGB GT coupes, the latter even being available in Buick V8 flavor from 1973 onward. But by 1980, the MGB exited production, unable to keep up with the competition from Japan even though the basic engineering was easy to work on and very well sorted. So that was it for the MGB, right?

Not quite. The idea of a small British roadster lived on, at least in the country that originated it.

The MGB made a brief comeback in 1993 in the guise of the MG RV8, a 3.9-liter V8-engined roadster that combined MGB architecture with Rover's corporate V8. And recently we got a chance to go for a spin in one. But first, a little bit more history.

By the late 1980s, MG was under the wing of a new corporate parent, the Rover Group: a descendant of British Leyland that wasn't just treading water all the time, for a change. Composed of the best parts of old BMC and BL, even joining forces with Honda on multiple sedans, the Rover Group occupied almost every segment in which it could sell a car. Every segment but one: the small roadster.

It was the sudden and overwhelming success of the Mazda Miata that awakened Rover to the realization that affordable roadsters were still a thing, and that, at one time, one of their brands was actually quite good at making affordable roadsters. Even though the MG brand itself was known more for boxy hatches and slightly dull impressions of Hondas by that time, it was still associated with the fun and sweet-handling B roadster that filled the roads when the weather was nice.

 Jay Ramey
1,983 examples were made in the UK over three model years, with most going to Japan. The rest stayed in the UK.

To revive and redesign the existing MGB, a team of MG veterans was literally brought out of retirement for one last project -- everyone from the engineers to the assembly-line workers. If this sounds like the makings of Hollywood script, with a team of grizzled action heroes returning for one last run, consider that Rover allotted a budget of only £5 million for the entire project. Converted into present day dollars, that's approximately $14,700,000, a sum that might not be sufficient today for a major automaker to properly design even a quarter of an engine.

Project Adder, as it was known, took advantage of as much existing MGB architecture as possible. Old MGB bodyshells were used as the basis for clay modeling bucks. In went the 3,950-cc Rover V8 engine with Lucas multipoint injection, good for 190 hp at 4,750 rpm and offering 234 lb-ft of torque. These figures gave the MG RV8 the ability to sprint to 60 mph in just 5.9 seconds, plenty quick for a small but heavy car with a relatively heavy engine up front. Power was sent to the rear wheels through a Rover R380 five-speed manual gearbox, though a few early cars used the Rover LT55 five-speed manual unit.

The MG RV8 turned out to be a mix of old and new technology, which is what one might expect from a "cameo appearance" such as this one, even though only 5 percent of the parts ended up being interchangeable with old MGBs. Up front, the car was sprung with an independent double-wishbone suspension with coil springs, telescopic shocks, and an anti-roll bar. In the back, Rover went with a live axle with twin-taper leaf springs, telescopic shocks and an anti-roll bar. The MG RV8 received disc brakes up front and drums in the back, over the 15-inch cast alloy wheels.

 Jay Ramey
The steering and dash are very luxurious, compared to older MG interiors.

An excited MG displayed the car before the British public in October 1992. The initial response was lukewarm, probably owing to the £26,000 price, which works out to approximately £46,000 today or $78,000, adjusted for inflation. That put the MG RV8 beyond Jaguar pricing, though not quite into Aston Martin territory. By that time, Aston was making just dozens of cars per year. But the response to the RV8 in Japan the following year was tremendous, and 1,300 buyers signed up on the spot. The MG RV8 went into production in 1993, with approximately 75 percent of cars being shipped to buyers in Japan. The rest stayed in the U.K., while a handful found buyers in Europe and a number of other RHD countries.

So how did our example end up in Canada?

Via Japan, it turns out. Michel Foti of Montreal was traveling in the U.K. a few years back and happened upon a classic car magazine in the airport. Even though he has owned British roadsters before, the existence of MG RV8s was news to him. Flipping through the magazine, he found a couple RV8s for sale in the U.K. After some searching on the Internet, he discovered that a fair chunk of the production run had been imported back to Britain from Japan. Foti kept searching until he found the Oxford Blue example that he brought to Canada.

"It's a 1994, one of the first sold in Japan, and I'm the third owner. A Japanese guy was the first owner, a British guy brought it back to the U.K., and I'm the third owner" Foti said as we settle in to go for a spin around Montreal on a subzero November morning.

Foti looked at three cars while he was in the U.K., visiting a dealer in Swansea, and, to his surprise, all of them had rather low mileage.

"This was the most expensive one of the three cars, but with [the] least mileage," Foti tells us. "But, of course, the car was like brand new, only 16,800 kilometers. It was funny to notice that the car was built in Coventry in the U.K., brought by sea to Japan, from Japan brought back to the U.K., and from U.K. brought back to Canada. So this car has more mileage by sea than road."

 Jay Ramey
Very few parts are interchangeable with the MGB.

Low mileage isn't always a good thing; having the equivalent of 10,400 miles on the clock meant the RV8 had likely seen long periods of dormancy. The car Foti bought required a little recommissioning but nothing major.

"I was surprised because when I bought it and I brought it back, it was like a tractor. It was very stiff," Foti says as we snake through Montreal traffic, with the metallic thrum of the V8 engine causing pedestrians to turn around with curiosity. "So the only thing I've done on the car is change everything that's rubber, everything that's rubber on the car. The tires, of course, all the bushings."

The chassis of the RV8 feels very different from that of old MGBs, as it should. For starters, the suspension has been redesigned pretty thoroughly; the wheels are wider, and so are the stance and the tires. And it's a much heavier car, too, with plenty of luxuries inside that would have seemed out of place in the old MGBs. No expense was spared, it seemed, to take the interior as far upmarket as possible, and the modest production plans allowed for every luxury trimming to be thrown at the RV8.

We ask Foti just how much of the old MGB is in this design.

"The guy who made the body shell of the car was the same who made the MGB in the beginning," Foti says "He was retired, and all of his team was retired. So they hired his whole team and the whole factory plant where they made the shell of the MGB, and they redesigned the car. So 60 percent of the car is the MGB, and 40 percent is Rover technology. Plus the gearbox and the engine, and the suspension is not the same as the original of the MGB."

 Jay Ramey
The old over 3.9-liter V8 soldiered on, one of the best engines in Rover's lineup at the time.

As the RV8 makes its way through morning traffic, the behavior of the chassis simply cannot be compared to the old MGBs. The sheer heft of the car is felt every second. Even though the overall length had stayed almost the same, the car feels bigger than the MGB does. Coupled with a no-expenses-spared interior, the overall feel is very much Jaguar XJS, which was still in production at the time when the RV8 was born.

"It's a little bit more weight for the engine. The good thing is that Rover worked perfectly with the suspension on the front because the engine is very heavy, so that was a problem with the MGB" Foti says.

"Do the wide tires really help?" we ask him.

"Oh yeah, it's different, you can feel it. Not, I would say at low speeds, but you can feel it when we're going very fast. The steering is very tough, and you need that. And you have no power steering, that is the other thing too. That is very tough."

The RV8 turned out to be a fairly successful exercise for Rover. Even though under 2,000 examples were built over two models years, the RV8 reconfirmed that Rover had the expertise and the touch to build roadsters, right when the world was finally coming out of a recession.

Perhaps it was the recession that kept the demand low, but the starting price of £26,000 was still a lot of money in the early 1990s. Aston Martin managed to shift a grand total of 46 cars in 1992. That's right: 46 cars for the whole year. Even if that wasn't necessarily a barometer of demand for British sports cars, Jaguar didn't rush to replace the aging XJS. The XK took over for it in 1996.

"When they came out with the car, it was 26,500 pounds. It was very expensive. At the same time, you had a Miata for 8,000, so it was very expensive," Foti says with a nod.

"So have most of them left Japan by now?" we ask.

"They still have a lot in Japan, but they have something, like, 900. And I was surprised, but they have a lot in Australia and New Zealand, so they have a few there."

 Jay Ramey
The interior has been redesigned, tailored for comfort given the asking price at the time.

Before you rush out to look at British classic ads, let us remind you that U.S. residents still have four years to wait before they can legally register an RV8 in the U.S. That statement, of course, comes with a few asterisks: For Canadians, any cars older than 15 years are fair game, as opposed to 25 years for us. So the earliest RV8s can come in to the U.S in 2018. That's... a long time if you want an RV8, but the few RV8 owners in Canada (three really, including Foti) will tell you it's worth it.

For a car with such a limited run, parts are a bit scarce, but so far its lucky owner hasn't had to do much. After all, the car hasn't even hit 15,000 miles.

"I'm now trying to get two back lights right now in case something happens because they made only 2,000 pieces. I would say the light in the front is not a big thing because it's a part from the old Porsche 911," Foti says.

"Made by Bosch?" we ask.

"Yes, but the back casing was made just for this model, and they didn't make a lot of them. So just that is more expensive than the disc brakes," Foti replies.

 Jay Ramey
A number of RV8s have since come back to the UK, though a few ended up in Australia and New Zealand.

With the run of under 2,000 examples, it is about what you'd expect when it comes to sourcing parts, but there really isn't anything in the RV8 that cannot be sourced from the Rover Group parts bin or reproduced from scratch, if needed, given the cottage industry for reproduction MGB parts.

"I remember when I was 20 years old and I was very lucky to get an MGB at that time," Foti tells us. "And for me, at that time, I'd wanted a roadster car for my life, all my life. Of course my life changed, like everybody, and I did not have a roadster car for many years. I have the chance to have one back, and I am very happy about it."

Vital Stats: MG RV8

Years of manufacture: 1993-1995

Number made: 1,983

Number sold in the U.S: 0

Number sold in Japan: 1,581

Similar cars: MGB, MGC, MGB GT V8

Value range: $14,000 - $25,000

Best source of parts: Japan, U.K.