They say don’t judge a book by its cover – but the same could apply to a car.
Take this one for example. When I first saw it, I thought it seemed like your average estate car. But I was wrong.
This is actually a 2004 MG ZT-T V8 – a very rare car indeed. It belongs to Les Finnie, who celebrates his 60th birthday tomorrow. He bought the car in July 2012, making a dream he had for a long time into a reality.
Back then, he had just moved into a new house with a big garden and was driving a BMW saloon car. He decided that he would sell that and get himself an older car.
“I bought an old Rover 75 estate,” he said.
“But about two months after that, I spotted the MG and I’ve always wanted a V8, especially an American engine V8, and I like estate cars and I like red cars so this ticked all the boxes.”
He saw an advert for the car in a newspaper and after some encouragement from partner Carolecorr, he decided to go for it. To make sure the car was his, he paid a £300 deposit and later made his way down to Kingsley, Hampshire, where the vehicle was located. It wasn’t your average, straightforward journey though.
“It was an eventful trip,” Les, who lives in Lhanbryde, near Elgin, Moray, said.
“I had to drive to Dalcross and take a plane to Luton, take a taxi to Leighton Buzzard, where Carole met me, take a train out to London to change trains to go to Alton, and then the guy met me there and took me out to Kingsley. So we saw the car, bought it and drove it back home. It was over 1,000 miles to get the car.”
While finding the advert might have been fate, Les has always been keen to be the owner of this particular model of MG. He first considered the idea back in 2003 but discovered they were too expensive. Then again in 2009 when he bought his BMW he again thought about it but couldn’t find one.
“There were only 838 of them made by MG Rover,” he said.
“They reckon there are only 120 estates, so not a lot of them on the go. There are very few of them, most of them have disappeared through accidents and age and everything. There are very few left on the road.”
The car previously belonged to “an old lady” as Les described, who only sold it as she was retiring and she wanted something smaller. Originally a dealer’s car, it had only 49,000 miles on the clock and apart from a few scratches on the bodywork, was in pretty good condition.
Once back home, Les, who says he is a “fanatic” for cleaning things, made it immaculate. He then joined a website called Twosixties, the forum for these particular cars.
“You have to own one before you can actually get into it,” he said.
From this forum he learned that you could get these cars supercharged – a system which increases the power of your vehicle.
He discovered Dreadnought Garage in Callandar did this particular conversion. But after deciding they were going to stop offering that service, they chose Les’s car to be their last.
Les said: “When they saw my car, they thought, that’s the perfect car to stop on. So they stopped doing
it after that.
“It’s caused a bit of trouble because other people wanted their cars supercharged but they just drew the line and said they are stopping.
“Brian Luti owns the garage and his son Paul did the conversion. They are very nice people and Paul did an excellent job of converting it. You’d never know anything had been done to it. It drives beautifully.”
Before the car boasted 260bhp – now it does over 400bhp.
“It’s a lot faster,” Les said.
“You can definitely notice it when you are driving. It’s just what the car was crying out for. MG Rover did do one build themselves, it was a Roush supercharger but then they went bust and that was the end of it. It never followed up.
“In my car 0-60mph is down to about 5.3 seconds, it was around 6.4 seconds before, and it is limited to 155mph. It’s a fair machine.
“It’s a real wolf in sheep’s clothing. It really is. When you look at it, you just think it is another estate car.”
Using it for weekends and in good weather, Les has made it to a few rallies, including Grantown Motormania last year.
He said a lot of people don’t really know what it is.
“A V8 Mustang engine, never heard of that before in an MG, they tell me,” he said.
“It’s very rare.”
After waiting so long to finally own one, it’s no surprise Les now plans to keep it and enjoy it. As he points out, he might never get the chance again.
“If I parted with it, I’d never get another one,” he added.
“It’s just that kind of car. It’s near impossible to get another supercharged one.”
First car:
Vauxhall FB VX490
Dream car:
Mustang Snake