You tell him you have an MX-5 and he gives you one of those old-fashioned looks¦
In our 2007 Yearbook we attempted to work out what was the greatest classic sports convertible ever made, using a number of criteria by which we judged ‘sports car.’ The MG T-Series ended up, using our criteria, in eighth place, not a bad result in some fabulous company.
Had we been selective in the criteria which we used to come to our conclusion, the MG T-Series would have come a great deal higher and might even have won. To many eyes it is what most people think a sports car should be. For all sorts of different reasons we voted the Mazda MX-5 into tenth place.
We asked which car was the ‘seminal’ sports car, and we believe that both the MX-5 and the MG T-Series came very high on the list of what your average person would think of as a great sports car at the time of its production. In both cases they were great sellers, and both opened up the world of small sports cars to the Americans, who since the inception of each have bought more sports cars than anyone else in the world.
Both were excellent club racing cars and gave the owner that great wind-in-the-hair feeling. Today the MG is still regarded as a stylish representative of the great age of simple, affordable sports cars.
The look of the old MG and the feel of being out in the open air is to many people the appeal of these cars. There is one key difference between the two, and that is that an MX-5, whilst being very enjoyable and simple to own, is a common sight on our roads.
You don’t have to be an MG enthusiast to admire or aspire to the open air and vintage look of an old MG. The feeling of driving around in a car that looks like this really makes your day a better day. People of all ages admire your car, and being in the open air you can often hear children telling their parents to have a look at what’s going past. No matter how cold the day, you get a warm feeling inside when that happens.
Many people who both own and see these cars on the roads are not judges of whether the car is genuine or old or correct in every detail, just admirers of the concept of freedom, style, and the mere fact that their drivers are different. To the general public, the customers or owners of replica sports cars would all be the same and want the same thing, but the truth is very different.
For a start we are not all purists. The degree to whether we can pick out what’s right and what’s not are different, and the amount that we care differs greatly too. What we want out of our hobby car also differs hugely.
The Alternatives
The likelihood of a true MG enthusiast buying a replica is pretty slim. The likelihood of an MG admirer buying a replica is quite high. The likelihood someone who knows very little about MGs, but likes the style, will buy a replica is even higher.
A genuine T-Series MG is, at the minimum, over 50 years old. That is an old car. Old cars take a lot of looking after, and to be a custodian of one is quite a responsibility. In the ’40s and ’50s it was taken as read that a car needed constant and regular maintenance, and today’s owners need to have that built into their ownership duties. Compared to even the most mundane cars today, cars of that age are slow, have poor brakes and weather proofing, and are not that comfortable in terms of ride, appointments or driving technique.
For a start we are not all purists. The degree to whether we can pick out what’s right and what’s not are different, and the amount that we care differs greatly too. What we want out of our hobby car also differs hugely.
The Alternatives
The likelihood of a true MG enthusiast buying a replica is pretty slim. The likelihood of an MG admirer buying a replica is quite high. The likelihood someone who knows very little about MGs, but likes the style, will buy a replica is even higher.
A genuine T-Series MG is, at the minimum, over 50 years old. That is an old car. Old cars take a lot of looking after, and to be a custodian of one is quite a responsibility. In the ’40s and ’50s it was taken as read that a car needed constant and regular maintenance, and today’s owners need to have that built into their ownership duties. Compared to even the most mundane cars today, cars of that age are slow, have poor brakes and weather proofing, and are not that comfortable in terms of ride, appointments or driving technique.
To some, that is their appeal, but to others it is a liability. Then there is the cost to take into account. Even the most daggy MG T-Series in a roadable condition will cost upwards of $25,000, and the costs won’t stop there.
To release yourself from all these issues you can buy a replica. There is a train of thought that goes — ‘well a replica is a replica, and that’s it.’ Not so. There are degrees of replication. There are people who want the car to look exactly the same and give similar experiences, but simply don’t want an old original, or can’t afford one. There are people who want the look but have no interest in getting their hands dirty, and have no technical knowledge whatsoever. Then there are people that want a hobby, which is to build a car, and there are people who don’t care whether the look is identical as long as the idea is conveyed.
There are degrees to which people would put up with the foibles of an old car, and degrees of performance and comfort that they want to achieve. There are people who prefer the TF look to the TD look, and so it goes on.
The good, the bad and the ugly
Ten or more years ago when there was a kit car boom in New Zealand and overseas there was a huge choice of cars which loosely provided the ‘T experience.’ Some were horrible and some were quite good. Using the old adage of ‘survival of the fittest’, today in New Zealand there are three choices, and they are all good, but they are not competitors because they each give the customer something entirely different in terms of a lifestyle and driving experience.
The first is to buy an original MG. Frankly, it is likely that most MG enthusiasts will have either stopped reading this by now or not even started the article, so we will leave that option for another day. The second is to pay upwards of $50,000 for a TD2000.
What you get there is a reasonably faithful replica of an MG TD with a modern engine and live rear axle, fully assembled and finished to a high standard, everything brand-new from a proper factory in Malaysia. No work to do, no input and a car with modern performance and weather-proofing but typical live axle handling.
What Russell Hooper of Alternative Cars International does is something entirely different again. You might think ‘International’ sounds a bit grand, but Russell Hooper sends 80 per cent of his production overseas, many to the home of kit cars, the UK, where there is more choice than anywhere else in the world, and it is somewhat of a fillip to this Onehunga-based company that, with so much choice, so many go for the NZ-built product.
Russell has gone for a ‘look’ rather than a replica, and that ‘look’ is clearly more of the later TF than it is the earlier TD models. The original MG TF was the last of the ‘vintage look’ MGs, and to many minds the best-looking.
Whilst you can order a fully built-up TG Sports from Russell’s company (and many do, our featured car being an export example ready to be shipped to the UK), it is not really the aim of the company to fulfil that market.
However, and it’s a big however, the ride and handling, steering and brakes of the TG are as least as good, and theoretically better than, a modern Mazda MX-5. That means, by any standards, it is good. How so? There’s a fully independent suspension set-up that has been praised the world over, and matched to the exact power train that it was intended for — having been taken from an otherwise unusable MX-5 and placed into the TG Sports.
All the components that sit under the bodywork of this car, apart from the propshaft, are taken unfettered from an original MX-5, so there is no mixing and matching of components, and no funny business to make them work. It’s straight bolt-on, bolt-off sub assemblies. The reason it is potentially better than an MX-5 is that the engine is placed further back to fit inside the triangulated
bonnet, hence there’s a slightly shorter propshaft, and correspondingly better weight distribution.
It might not look it, but the TG is actually lower than an MX-5 too, and you still benefit from the MX-5’s clever torque tube-type of arrangement between the power unit and diff.
What’s Down Under?
What you have here is a car that is not a faithful replication of any MG, but looks the part of a ’50s sports car and gives you the same wind-in-the-hair experience, together with admirable looks, but with the trouble-free and excellent dynamic characteristics of one of the best modern sports cars on the market, and certainly one of the most reliable. It’s a good package, made all the more reasonable by the fact that you can use MX-5 components of any age, knowing that by definition they are durable and reliable, and buy and build when you want to suit your pocket.
Whilst it is a car that comes in a kit, Russell feels there are certain connotations that go with the phrase ‘kit-car’ which he would prefer to distance himself from. Whilst you fit the sub assemblies together yourself, there is very little in the way of remanufacturing and finishing that the owner has to do. Some kit cars are notoriously badly finished and shoddy once finally on the road. Alternative Cars products’ are not shoddy. The radiator shells, for example, are built by the same person who built the radiator shell for the concours-winning MG TB we featured a few months ago.
Russell’s workshops are tidy and cleverly laid out so that everything fits on a jig whilst it is manufactured, and if it fits the jig it will fit together when you do it yourself. If the owner can wield a spanner, that’s pretty much all they need to do: there’s no drilling and fabricating, and the only time the owner needs skills beyond the comprehensive instruction manual is when making the engine computer talk to the engine. Apparently any decent auto-electrician can do this.
Wing it
The glass fibre body is fixed to a sturdy steel box section chassis, with all the attachment points that an MX-5 would have to its suspension and power unit assemblies. The chassis is strong, with all the calculations done by Walter Wing, who used to be a compliance engineer. I’ve known Walter a long time — if he says it is strong enough, it’s strong enough.
So what you have here is, as the name of the company suggests, a life-style alternative, every one of which involves slightly more effort than buying a brand new car — the more you pay the less effort. If you pay the minimum, currently NZNZ$23,950 plus GST in New Zealand, here is what you get.
The unpainted (unless otherwise ordered), fibreglass body is pre attached to the painted chassis with fender welting all fixed in place. This includes the front and rear mudguards, doors, gas tank cover, the steel bonnet panels with their piano hinge, and the chrome-on-brass grille and radiator. The bumpers, wiring loom for all lights etc, all weather seals and sundry rubbers, door catches and hinges, the upholstery set including carpets, the door panels, and soft convertible top, and a fibreglass dash panel with instrument positions. The brake, clutch, and accelerator pedals are all fixed to vehicle, as is the windscreen wiper system, awaiting the donor parts. All lights, interior and exterior mirrors, the luggage carrier, heater demister system, and other miscellaneous parts are supplied.
As the new owner you have to find all the Mazda MX-5 parts, including the engine computer system, as well as the windscreen glass, headlight inners, instruments, and anything from the options list. When you have finished it you have a period-looking
Ample performance
A turnkey car is what we tried out, and it’s quite an unusual experience for anyone used to a classic car. It looks like one and in most respects feels like one. But you don’t get the appalling scuttle shake, you get ample performance and remarkable comfort, ride and handling.
Russell has gone to a lot of trouble to make the usual bug-bears of hood sticks a thing of the past, and to ensure that everything fits without your needing the dexterity of a micro surgeon or the strength of an Olympic shot putter.
Its weather-proofing will never be as convenient and effective as an MX-5’s, but that is probably one of the few sacrifices you make to have a car of such character.
More than anything else, what I liked about this product was the guy who sells them. Russell Hooper is not a trained engineer, but he is a very good one, and he thinks long and hard about the way he manufactures the cars and has the degree of honesty and transparency that you can trust — that alone gave me a great deal of confidence.
I enjoyed my day driving the TG sports, having a look around the small but efficient factory and chatting away to Russell. He is an enthusiast, the same as you and me. He wanted an original MG T-Series but couldn’t afford one, so he decided to build his own and started selling them back in 1984 using mainly Triumph components. Naturally, using Triumph bits the car would still retain a large element of the ‘vintage’ aspect in feel and finish, but the arrival of thousands of Japanese import MX-5s allowed Russell to create his master stroke.
His original Triumph-based design was widened and refined, and the way the MX-5 is built allowed him to make the kit simplicity itself. The efficacy of the MX-5 donor gave the car a much wider appeal, no longer was it an old-fashioned car in anything but looks.
Specs
TG Sports
Chassis: Semi-monocoque chassis with full Automotive Engineering Design including frontal crash impact area
Suspension: Mazda MX-5 fully independent front and rear suspension
Steering: Standard rack and pinion steering from Mazda MX-5
Brakes: D D Disc brakes, lines and hoses from Mazda MX-5
Fuel system: Mazda MX-5 tank with return line, fuel lines and filters
Electrical: All new wiring looms including computer loom. All new instruments
Body: Fibreglass gel coat. Coremat is added to give stone protection in mudguard areas the grille is all chrome-on-brass, hand-crafted with stainless slats and solid brass octagonal cap
Bonnet: 1.2mm electro galvanised steel with genuine louvres and stainless steel hinge. Push button catches. Door: fibreglass with side intrusion protection. Stainless steel burst-resistant hinges, double action burst-proof catches
Motor and transmission, choice of: Mazda MX-5 1600cc — 87kW (116bhp) at 6500rpm, MX-5 1800cc — 99kW (133bhp) at 6500rpm
Words Tim Nevinson Photos Jared Clark
