new TF reveiw....

[scott]

in the news of the world motoring colum by james foxall and to be honest he doesnt give it a good write up he recons that the mx5 is a better car even though and i quote " pound for pound its (ther tf) better equipt than the japanese motor which is also slowerto accelerate (than the tf) and has a lower top speed"
to me it just read like this guy was going to slate the tf no matter what

[stux99]

I started to read it, sounded biased to me

[stux99]

But it looks gorgeous

[stoneybroke]

So “a new journey begins” the brochure proudly boasts. I went to the launch at Victor Wood, MG Dealers in Grantham – a dealership where the MG Rover signs still adorns the showrooms.

They had a crystal white one in the showroom and a vibrant orange one registered for demo. When I arrived at about 11am there was a real party atmosphere going on in the showroom where customers were enjoying the buffet and drink, and talking positively about the new arrivals. The white one had been sold with an hour of opening and another dealer reported that he had had three cars and four customers and two had been engaged in a dutch auction with the result that it had been sold above list price.

The white one was flanked by a red MGA and a blue TF – a very patriotic combination. The white is a pearlescent colour and shimmered under the spotlights. The paintwork was excellent and there was no evidence of any orange peel that I had seen on the ones displayed at Silverstone and MG Fest. It had black interior as per the brochure which complemented the exterior paintwork wonderfully. I noticed it was numbered as 100/500 with the intention only to make a further 25 white ones. It was also fitted with shadow chrome 11 spoke alloy wheels and looked really smart. However, I did find difficult to understand was that it was displayed with some of the bolt heads in the boot lid having been dabbed with a brown paint which most people took as rust and detracted from the overall appearance. There was also evidence of some paint cracking where bolts had been tightened on the slam panel under the bonnet area. I dare say that these minor blemishes would be remedied before final delivery but it did detract from the overall appearance.

I drove the orange one with the hardtop on and off. On starting the car it sounded just like my TF but the driving experience was totally different. I noticed that the gear lever was longer like the MGF, that the driver and passenger sat a fraction higher and that the instrumentation was totally new. Having adjusted the steering column, I noticed that vertical movement has been increased but if one puts it in the lowest position it blocks out all the instrumentation.

The gear shift was smooth and positive almost similar to a Mike Satur slick shift. The engine picked up smoothly and even with only 129 miles on the clock acceleration was equally as good as my own TF. The ride was delightful as, I believe, the 2005MY suspension set up has been installed. With the roof off it was just marvellous day to enjoy the September sunshine. Although, the memsab did notice that wind stop is much shallower and therefore not as effective in preventing buffeting and knotting her hair.

However, my enthusiasm was also dented by a number of major squeaks, rattles and noises coming from the rear of the car – more noticeably evident when turning left, that the steering wheel was misaligned and that the hardtop was ill fitting around the front passenger window where my passenger discovered a very sharp edge when she put a finger into the hole.

I wish it well and welcome it to the fold of MG. I do hope, however, that the dealer’s feedback initial observations as the few minor disappointments do detract from the overall appearances and impressions.

Crystal white TF LE 500 (no 100)

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[Mr bennett]

I drove the new TF Saturday ,
ive never drove a TF and the only comparison i can draw is from my 98 VVC.

I thought the new car was put together really well and didnt hear any rattles or squeeks coming from anywhere ,all the controls were chunky and i love the new dash the ,digital temp gauge is ment to be more accurate, the gear shift was nice and the big brakes were really good .
The ride and the handling were good ,sharp and not to harsh ( ive herd the TF ride is not as good as the F) I thought it was fun.
It was interesting (seeing as it was a hot day) how long the cooling fan was on after the engine had stopped , the dealer could not tell me what improvents they had made to engine he just told me it was called the N series , and he stated mg hgf was " driver related" which is i part true. a mg warrity comes with the car.
The down side is the price ,i can buy alot of car for 16 grand and weighing it up, paying that for a car that is the same as what i have now without the squeeks and rattles and a little slower is quite alot. i only got offered 2 grand for mine.
and by the way there are no orange and white cars left according to the dealer boooooooo
i think i will leave it until they make a totally brand new car thats got a little more umph.

[colintf]

there's plenty orange about, and a white one soon to be on sale near me!

[gwp]

I noticed it was numbered as 100/500 with the intention only to make a further 25 white ones.

The Crystal White one we saw at Apple was number 004/500! so the numbering is not sequential on the colours...

Can't remeber the numbers of the 3 orange ones I think one was 76 the others were in the hundreds!

[adrianclifford]

No.003 is from Cardiff and it's blue.

By the way, the Orange TF we tested for MGE was a "press car" as stated on it's badge and carries no LE number, so in fact there will be more than 500.

[Scarlet Fever]

Went to Perkins of Rayne and spent an enjoyable hour or so picking over the LE500, specifically spotting the things NAC MG have done to improve the car and overall, i was impressed.

The changes are many and very far-reaching, for instance you can tell the bodyshell is manufactured on new tooling - the swage lines are crisper and the panel fit is better. Also there are weight differences, the bonnet in particular felt noticeably heavier than my 1996 MGF one. Subtle differences i grant you, and probably not going to be picked up by your average Journo, but to an owner (and fan!) of a (almost) 13 year old F they were particularly impressive - this is not a warmed-over 2005 TF, it is a new car.

I suppose i would best describe it as a reproduction TF (which is kinda apt as the word has more than one appropriate meaning) - they have re produced the car and taken the time to re produce a huge amount of the tooling - in this regard it is a replica and not a continuation.

So, what was it like?

Very good.

Don't get me wrong, it wasn't as quick as my (modified) F and the handling i felt was close but not quite on a par with my (modified) F (not that i could really put it through it's paces with the salesman next to me).

As a direct comparison, here are my thoughts:

Performance should be about the same as my F, although delivered slightly differently - this was not the case - the car felt sluggish next to mine. Some of this is because the new car only had 91 miles on it (no where near run-in), although my F currently has 127,000 miles under it's belt so age and wear should have compensated for this. Also weight shouldn't be an issue either, yes the LE500 is fully loaded, but then my F is full of timber, additional electrical gimmickery and other miscellaneous items - they should roughly balance each other out (neither car had the hardtop fitted) - also, yesterday i had my F rolling road tested and she's producing roughly 145-150bhp at the fly (119.5 measured at the wheels) - so in terms of power the cars aren't too far apart either.

I think the issue here is torque - my modifications mean that torque is delivered differently and this was noticed by me from behind the wheel of the LE500. It just didn't 'fly' like mine does.

Handling also was different to mine, my Hydragas set up is tweaked to my preferences, the LE500 obviously has to appeal to a much wider range of drivers, so i wasn't expecting it to impress me here... but it did. I would like to get one on a track and put it through it's paces as it felt sure footed in a way that the old TF doesn't - there was very little pitching and i felt like i was in contol of the car rather than the ruts in the road (tramlining is an issue with my F and pitching for me was an issue with the outgoing TF) - on top of this the ride quality was better than my F and not too far from a stock F either - this is a vast improvement in my eyes and the ride was the one thing that stops me buying a 2002 MY TF - it just isn't comfortable to be in. Some comfort is worth sacrificing for handling, indeed my F has a harsh ride in comparison with it's contemporaries, but the 2002 TF was a step too far for me i'm afraid and although the 2005 TF was a great step in the right direction, i felt the LE500 had now got it right. Well done.

Build quality was very good indeed, lots of little differences that added up to a whole, like the changes to the tiny little rubber closer on the top (jamb) corner of the door card, the anti-thief shield on the bonnet plunger switch, the under-bonnet light making a comeback, as are the twin horns, 6 press studs to secure the boot carpet to the separating wall instead of 4 (still no boot net though ). And most surprising of all - the cigar lighter now illuminates!!! Right from the word go there was an illuminated cigar lighter fitted, but they never wired it in (it's a simple and popular modification amongst F owners) - the LE500 one works like it should. Brought a smile to my face.

Equipment levels are impressive, this is what sells the car more than anything else – value for money is really hard to beat here as the car is fully loaded – this alone means they will sell the LE500’s no trouble I reckon – and if they pitch the stock car at the right price then it too will sell. I thought I’d hate the dials, but in fact I warmed to them very quickly indeed. Traditionally if the speed needle points down at rest I don’t like it, but I surprised myself and came away thinking that it was the right way to go, also the speedo and rev counters are reversed (speedo on the left, rev counter on the right), this too I thought I’d struggle with but no it too felt right. I like the dot matrix display, kinda funky, and even though the cream faced F dials will always hold a special place in my heart, the piano black dials on the LE500 I felt were a huge step forward from the (very millennium) silver faced ones of the MY2K F and 2002/2005 TF. Black is the new silver!

There were three cars at Perkins, vibrant orange, raven black and crystal white (demonstrator). Orange is good fun, black looked mean and moody, almost a stealth car, but the white one was an astonishing colour – a real head turner – I couldn’t stop looking at it. They are only doing 25 in this colour I understand – why? It has a crystal feel to the colour, real depth, like the old Monogramme colours, but less extreme. Imagine Sunspot yellow, but in white and you get some idea of it – I loved it.

So, would I buy one?

No.

Don’t get me wrong; this is not because it is a bad car, or even an old one. Quite the opposite in fact, it felt new and was I felt a genuine step forward from the old model, I even think it is very keenly priced given the spec. I seriously considered trading the ZT 260 for one at the time – it’s that good a car.
What killed it for me was that it just didn’t have enough go under the loud pedal. A 160 model is not just desirable, it is NECESSARY. When you can pick up a TF160 for pennies and the ’05 spec model in particular is close to the new LE500 in all but spec and build, those extra horses make a difference. Plus I felt that good as the new car is, my old F was more fun to drive… This is of course a VERY biased opinion!

So, in conclusion I liked it, liked it a LOT in fact. The future of MG seems to be in good hands. Well done NAC MG.

[adrianclifford]

Wow Andy, a full size write up !

However, as many will know whom, I have spoken to, I did not like the performance of the new car either when I took the press car out with MGE, mainly for two reasons :

The windstop is too low, it doesn't do it's job for this reason and the top line runs right through the rear view mirror. (It was to provide clearance for the hood so I was told by NAC) that it does but it's really annoying and a pain to live with.

The performance was very poor, I was reliably informed the engine was fully run in (often the press cars get a thrashing) I could not keep anywhere near my car which the photographer was driving even with my foot buried in the carpet (my F is an mpi as is Andy's). It is very quiet, it just doesn't sound like a sports car, in top gear my car shows at 3000rpm 74mph (71mph actual) the LE500 showed only 61mph but I was assured that the gearing has not been changed.

I concur with Andy about the overall finish, ride quality and attention to detail (such as the under bonnet and bootlid have a full coat of gloss paint) it's a nice car, for the price it's very nice in my opinion but the performance issue left me looking for something else I'm afraid.

So much so that I was very happy to get back in my F for the drive home, listening to the exhaust, feeling the torque just as I like it.

[colintf]

I'm guessing the LE500 is 100 times better than the Skoda Fabio I have just been given from our car pool to go to Derby and back in tomorrow! This does however, sound like a racecar (but I suspect only from inside the car) in first gear between 0 and 30 mph, but when you change up to 2nd, it's flat as a pancake

Wish I was driving a LE500 to Derby and back tomorrow instead

[Chris Tideswell]

I will be test driving a LE500 next Saturday so it will be interesting to compare the performance of my unmodified 6 year old 135 with the 135 engine of the LE500. Sadly I will be driving one of the press cars as I hoping to get to drive car number one but this has had to go back to Longbridge for 'final checking' before it can be registered.

[mgtfnut]

I was impressed with the finish and the detail as Scarlet describes.

My impression of the engine was that it had been tamed , made Euro4 compliant, knock sensor and new ecu, different combustion chamber shape etc, different noise, quieter. So perhaps it is more of a Eurobox engine now, which might mean it is more "bullet proof". If it is, it may be a price worth paying to rid it of it's old image. Another interesting fact emerged in that the ecu is new, using only some components of the old MEMS. A new diagnostic kit is needed, which is not yet retro compatible with our older cars!! When things have settled down, a "fix" will emerge which enable heritage models to be plugged into the new kit. Also, the old T4s will never be renewed , so when they eventually fail, they eventually fail Nothing new there then

The one thing that really impressed me was the new wash/wipe, with a single wipe after completing the cycle to clear up any drips - why couldn't that have been on the TF?

[willyphixitt]

Hi Guys,
Had a preview of the new model last Friday evening. The local MGOC members were all invited. Still awaiting a call back to book a test drive. The guy handling the car demos being out of the island, taking his eldest to uni. Don't like the orange colour - not a patch on my volcano orange F. OH, and those black wheels - sorry but I just don't like them on the orange. Maybe the business on the black model.
Very interesting to read the comments so far posted. Dave rang from the garage this morning and I've got a test drive tomorrow morning, Thursday.
The garage only had the one car - others to follow shortly. The price in Jersey for the LE500 is £14,500-00.
TTFN
willyphixitt

[transforce]

http://www.topgear.com/blogs/drives/225-mg-tf/

[Scarlet Fever]

Interestingly, only the orange and the black LE500s get the black alloys/fuel filler/boot lid strips/grilles etc. The Crystal White LE500 at Perkins had shadow chrome alloys and silver bits and bobs a la old TF, plus a bright pack (door handles, grilles etc in chrome)

[Chris Tideswell]

Thanks to Luffield for letting me have a test drive of the LE500 (in white), the car that I drove this morning is one of the press cars with around 1200 miles on the clock.

Got into the car and the driving position seemed to be much more elevated then my TF, suddenly the criticism that is often levelled at the F/TF that the driver feels like they are sitting on the car rather then in the car suddenly makes more sense. Perhaps my seat has sagged over the years or have the seats in the LE500 got more padding in them? So I start to move off and stall it, the car have a very light clutch compared to mine and I am even more sure that clutch on my car is on its way out. Set off down a road that I know very well and I was surprised how much the car was moving around at 50 MPH I would have expected the tyres to have scrubbed in by now. I have sat of the fence in regard of the new instrumentation pack and have to say in use I like the instruments a lot. The car feels very tight and rattle free as you should expect from a brand new car but on the other hand it does seem much better bolted together. A lot has been made of the cars revised suspension set up and in all honesty I can’t tell a lot of difference although I was alarmed when I hit a slightly sunken inspection cover in the road at 40mph and car shuck and banged and I momentarily didn’t feel in control of the car, I went back with my own car and there was no drama as I drove over the same cover.

A lot has been said about the engine being a bit gutless and I have to say it didn’t seem to be any different to 135 that has seen 45K miles, I was able to make very rapid progress over country lanes and on duel carriageways, perhaps after almost 4 years I have learnt to get the best out of the 135’s engine. There seems to be a lot of road noise from the tyres.

Good points
You can buy a new MG again
It's still a lot of fun to drive
It seems well put together
The new instrumentation and the ‘piano’ gloss back bits

Bad points
The windstop’s top bar is very thick and blocks most of you rear vision through the rear-view mirror.
The elevated driving position.
Intrusive tyre noise
The isn’t fundamentally different enough to make me want to find £16K

[dwkmgf]

Went out to Perkins during the week having missed the weekend free-for-all, with every intention of taking a test drive. Had a look at the Crystal White car parked on the forecourt before venturing inside. Happy salesman saunters over, asked if I was interested in purchasing one and I heard myself saying only if it comes in auto (knowing full well that it didn't and wasn't ever likely too). Salesman laughed, started to pass comment on what he thought of the auto MGF (until my mate told him I drove an auto F and he had just lost any hope of converting me to a manual!!).

I don't know why, but I was distintly underwhelmed by the car. I suppose, having read all the hype, expectation was greater than reality. I can't put my finger on it, maybe the black gloomy interior (although I like the piano black dash bits), or the colours that Perkins had - the white looked grubby compared to the whites used by MG-R, the black (with the black interior) was ....too black, and the orange was ...tangoed!

On the drive home my mate asked what was wrong and I said that for some reason I felt more fearful for the future of MG now, than I had done previously !??!

I wish the car and NAC-MG success.

[stux99]

Mmmmm After enquiring direct I got this reply from Keith Harris of Customer Relations NAC MG UK Limited
The main part of the reply
"There are no immediate plans to bring any other transmission options on stream for the TF. That is not to say that we would never consider it if we received a volume of feedback but certainly, there will be no LE 500's nor entry 135's with such an option.

If you did wish to join us on this new journey with one of the sought after LE 500's then it would need to be a manual."

So I will have to make other plans

[colintf]

Mmmmm After enquiring direct I got this reply from Keith Harris of Customer Relations NAC MG UK Limited
The main part of the reply
"There are no immediate plans to bring any other transmission options on stream for the TF. That is not to say that we would never consider it if we received a volume of feedback but certainly, there will be no LE 500's nor entry 135's with such an option.

If you did wish to join us on this new journey with one of the sought after LE 500's then it would need to be a manual."

So I will have to make other plans

I guess it comes down to potential sales numbers.

Stu - you could always look for a late Stepspeed TF?