MG RV8 buying guide
The MG RV8 was always an oddity in motor industry terms. Many new cars have arrived with strong styling echoes of previous models a company may have made twenty or thirty years before but not as a modernised version of a car originally launched thirty years before. For example, modern interpretations of former models such as Mini, Fiat 500 and even the forthcoming retro Renault 5 all hark back to the original models but the cars are all new. Against that backdrop, the October 1992 MG RV8 launch was quite different for being a true return.
What allowed the RV8 to be developed was mainly the return to production of new MGB bodies by BMH Ltd., then a Rover company, in the spring of 1988. Whilst the original MGB’s B-series engine was long before retired, there was still the V8. This had been produced for the MGB GTV8 from 1973 to 1976 and the continuing availability of that engine in Land Rover and Range Rover models provided a certified power unit to fit into this new RV8.
I had direct involvement in the early days of the RV8’s development, simply from having built an MGB GT with a fuel injected Rover V8 in the early 1980s and it was so successful that I converted my own 1968 MGB in 1985. As both cars used off-the-shelf Rover Group parts with little or no modification this attracted the attention of the Rover people looking to develop the new MGB bodies into a complete car. As a result, on a warm day in July 1989, I was asked to take my car to the old Canley Triumph factory where a meeting of the Rover Group board was occurring. One of the items on
