New Smart-based MG Roadster could see production by early 2007

[Vonie]

New Smart-based MG Roadster could see production by early 2007

The UK-based Kimber group has assembled a high-profile set of Europan industry executives to revive MG sports cars using technology from the Smart car brand.

By 2011, Kimber plans to be building two sports cars at an annual combined volume of 19,000 units.

The first car to come to market would be a small roadster based on the Smart Roadster. Smart stopped building that model last autumn because of slow sales.

The second vehicle would be a larger roadster using some of the components of the MG TF. The MG TF went out of production when MG Rover collapsed last April.

The CEO of Kimber's management team will be Englishman Barrie Wills, a long-standing industry figure who launched the Elan at Lotus and also worked for Jaguar and De Lorean.

Kimber's chairman will be UK businessman David James, a company recovery specialist who helped to revive the Millennium Dome exhibition complex in Greenwich near London.

Executives with auto industry experience will take on key roles, including John Perrott, formerly of McLaren and Lotus, who will be the purchasing director.

Italian Paolo Caccamo will serve as an advisor to the project. He is chairman of design and engineering specialist I.DE.A. Institute of Italy and the former CEO of Italian contract manufacturer Bertone.

Former Freightliner and Mercedes-Benz USA President Peter Keilbach, a German national, is also on the Kimber board.

U.S. exports planned
Kimber and Smart signed the memorandum of understanding on February 17 that allows Kimber to redesign, produce and sell the former Smart Roadster and Roadster-Coupe models under a different brand name.

Kimber also can buy production equipment for both models that is no longer needed by Smart.

Kimber plans to start production of the rebadged Roadster early next year, in time for a debut at the 2007 Geneva show.

Sources say Kimber and Chinese carmaker Nanjing Automobile are negotiating to use the MG brand for the reborn roadster. The model may carry the Midget name, used on MG's lightweight sports car of the 1960s and 1970s.

Up to 7,000 roadsters will be made in the first full year of operation, sources say. By the third year, the company wants to increase to 11,000 cars a year.

Kimber aims to build a larger, more expensive sports car in 2010. Within a year, planned annual volume is expected to be 8,000 units.

Kimber hopes to export the larger sports car to the U.S.

Senior Kimber officials say they have sufficient financial backing, including auto industry investors, venture capitalists on both sides of the Atlantic and one "extremely wealthy" private individual.

Kimber won't discuss the actual sums involved until final negotiations with Smart and other parties are completed, but sources say the total investment could run to E70 million or more.

Under the terms of the agreement concluded with Smart, Kimber will move the Roadster's production line from Smart's factory in Hambach, eastern France, to a new site.

Three locations, all of which qualify for EU grant aid, are under consideration,:

>> A former Dunlop tire plant in Coventry, England

>> A site next to Ford's Bridgend engine works in Wales

>> A greenfield site at Erfurt in eastern Germany, near Opel's assembly plant in Eisenach.

Sources close to Kimber say the company has reached an agreement to use the new three-cylinder Mitsubishi engine that will go into the second-generation Smart ForTwo, due in 2007.

Kimber will discard the Smart Roadster's often-criticized six-speed clutchless transmission in favor of a conventional manual transmission.

Kimber plans to keep using Smart's production system, in which suppliers deliver and install modules directly on the assembly line. Sources say most of the Roadster's existing suppliers will stay.

The Kimber group takes its name from Cecil Kimber, who founded MG in 1924.

Autoweek(a pic).

It was a long story so I thought I'd post it up.

 

[Dave A]

Interesting, I hope it's successful, MG didn't deserve to be dragged down with Rover.

 

[Sting]

Interesting, I hope it's successful, MG didn't deserve to be dragged down with Rover.

well technically they did when all they did was use a Rover car with a few styling mods in the case of a Z series cars. Sorry, but that was a huge mistake that they have now paid for.

 

[Dave A]

I mean the brand, the heritage of what was such a great sportscar make. The entire handling of the MG brand under MG Rover was wrong, even the SV was handled terrible, it was an average muscle car for an almost supercar price. MG doesn't need such an expensive car it needs a new Midget, it needs a new MGB ect, it needs an Elise rival, and a good one at that, the highest MG needs to worry about aiming for is TV Tamora performance, not exactley low performance, but affordable performance, and as a car it's far shy of M6's and V8 Vantage's. MG will not win if it goes up against thoes cars, not for a good while anyway.

 

[Danny]

Yeah, the SV was a pretty bad mistake.

5.7L V8 and agressive styling are all very well, but 80,000 big ones?

 

[ExigeEvan]

Plus Rowan Atkinson was constantly back to the garage with his, even though he loved it when it finaly go going.

The MGF sold a hell of alot and was a decent car. If they had released a hard-core version of it it would have been a great little car, but I don't know if the chassis was up to it.

I'd like to see the plant come to Bridgend though, the car industry is going abit crap at the moment in Wales now that Visteon has started failing.

 

[Poverty]

Kimber is dumb. Smart are loosing money themselves so why use a money loosing chassis to revive a tarnished brand.

 

[Dave A]

Smart isn't loding money because the chassis is poor, they're losing money because of their marketing, their cars are pretty decent, they just don't have a great image, they look, well, gay. MG still has a pretty good image despite it's last frolic with Rover's, people still associate them with sporty cars.

 

[Poverty]

Rebadged rovers to me. MG is tarnished forever. Never can you go up to a female, tell her you drive an MG, and expect to get laid.

 

[Dave A]

That's a bit shallow so if they go on to make the best sportscar in the world you don't care, they're tarnished forever, right. Out of curiosity how old are you? Because pretty much everyone I know who's over 18 still think's MG's a good make (including the girls). It doesn't matter if some school kid's don't look at them like that, they're a good number of years away at least from becoming potential MG buyers. And if you need to tell a girl what you drive to get laid, you've got more problems than what you drive .

 

[BMW POWER]

I agree live4speed, I still think the MG name is well respected and it was just a huge shame it got dragged down with Rover. Maybe atleast now, basing their cars on a more modern chassis will be enough to make them competitive in the market but like whats already been said they need to stick to this market and stop chasing Porsche.

 

[Poverty]

That's a bit shallow so if they go on to make the best sportscar in the world you don't care, they're tarnished forever, right. Out of curiosity how old are you? Because pretty much everyone I know who's over 18 still think's MG's a good make (including the girls). It doesn't matter if some school kid's don't look at them like that, they're a good number of years away at least from becoming potential MG buyers. And if you need to tell a girl what you drive to get laid, you've got more problems than what you drive .

lol Im 18 mate, and outside of the UK if you talk about a modern MG as being a enthiusiats car they will laugh at you. Its even evident on our roads that kids dont think highly of MG's as they still choose the likes of corsas over them even though you can get some MG bargains now.

When I think pre-rover MG I think of small, fragile, unreliable british cars that have 70hp.

 

[Dave A]

Who said modern MG, I'm talking MG point blank, MG from the beginnig up to now. They were at one time one of the leading sportcar companies, they were never particularly unreliable, and they were newver over priced. Cars like the MGB has success in various forms of motorsport, even the MGF and MG TF were good cars, the MGF though not great was compromised deliberately so it wouldn't take sales away form other models and the MG TF was a big improvment. Even the Rover based MG's were much improved over the Rover badged cars they were based on. Remeber the raseon MG went down was because Rover went down, not because they were bad cars, but because they were part of the same company. The mistake the group made for MG was the MG SV and the V8 powered ZT, they put too much money into two cars that would never pay for themselves. The cars they came out with were fine with the MG ZS being described one of the finest handling fwd saloon cars around and feeling a bit like a BMW 3 series. I don't know where your coming from with you no offence intended, shallow argument, but MG is far from unrevivable and they've never been particularly bad cars.

 

[ExigeEvan]

lol Im 18 mate, and outside of the UK if you talk about a modern MG as being a enthiusiats car they will laugh at you. Its even evident on our roads that kids dont think highly of MG's as they still choose the likes of corsas over them even though you can get some MG bargains now.

When I think pre-rover MG I think of small, fragile, unreliable british cars that have 70hp.

People choose Corsa over MGs because there's a much bigger aftermarket for Corsas.
There are other factors, but that is by far the biggest.

Plus, the MG ZT-T is a fine car, even if it is based off the 75.

 

[Danny]

RWD and V8 only add to the greatness.

The K-Series V6 achieved critical acclaim too.

 

[JohnBM01]

I'll be short on this one. This car looks pretty interesting. It kind of reminds me of either the Smart Four-Two or the Four-Four (whatever they are called). I too hope it has a future in something other than retirement or slumping sales.

 

[Pebb]

Oh great the Smart badge will ruin the MG history and name I reckon.

 

[Poverty]

People choose Corsa over MGs because there's a much bigger aftermarket for Corsas.
There are other factors, but that is by far the biggest.

Plus, the MG ZT-T is a fine car, even if it is based off the 75.

I canta ccount for the whole of London but where I live modding cars other than the alloys at most is gay.

As for MG, sorry dont rate the company. Theyre miniscule to me and most average people on the streets.

Ask them to name as many sports car companies as they can and they will mention MG last or not at all.

MG has no car that was iconic or a item of lust.

 

[Dave A]

I canta ccount for the whole of London but where I live modding cars other than the alloys at most is gay.

As for MG, sorry dont rate the company. Theyre miniscule to me and most average people on the streets.

Ask them to name as many sports car companies as they can and they will mention MG last or not at all.

MG has no car that was iconic or a item of lust.

I can't help but feel your simply trying to project your own opinion onto others here, by putting forward your opinion as though everyone agree's. More people mod their cars in London ie bodykit's, flared arches, exhausts so big they reduce you cars power ect, than up here. You might think modding a car is gay, but believe me, not all Londers do, especially not all 18-30 year old Londoners. It's perfectly fine if you don't rate MG, the bottom line is they arn't a bad company, and they never really have been, even under Rover.

Last two points, MG probably won't be as high on peoples minds as compnies like Ferrari, Porsche, Lots ect, but who's betting a lot people don't mention Mazda either. Doesn't mean they arn't sporty or they arn't good cars, and it doesn't mean people don't view them as such. And finally, MG made some of the best sportscars, are you telling me when the MGB came out no one set their hearts on owning one. Balls, I know people that still buy old MG's, my uncle owned an MGB GT when they came out, his words are "it was a hell of a chick magnet". It's not an opinion as to weather or not some MG's were desireable, the fact is they were. Just because you don't like them doesn't prevent the facts. By all means, keep your opinion, no ones going to stop you, but stating thing's like MG never made an iconic car is plain false, they made a few.

 

[ExigeEvan]

I canta ccount for the whole of London but where I live modding cars other than the alloys at most is gay.

Then you might need to get out of London more often.

As for MG, sorry dont rate the company. Theyre miniscule to me and most average people on the streets.

Ask them to name as many sports car companies as they can and they will mention MG last or not at all.

MG has no car that was iconic or a item of lust.

Ask people to name British sports car manufacturers and I bet the top 3 will be Jaguar, MG and Lotus. And I bet most people that have little knowledge of cars will mention Jaguar and MG over lotus.

 

[niky]

The problem with MG is that nobody has really cared enough to put good money into the brand. But they still have a cachet for nifty, spirited roadsters. I still smile whenever I see an MGB at a car show.

Ahurm... besides the argumentation, it's a pretty nifty move to ressurect the Roadster.

The problem with the Smart experiment is that so much of the cars were new, bespoke and engineered at a ghastly expense that Mercedes couldn't possibly sell enough to justify the costs.

They were also way overpriced because of all this bespoke hardware. (I mean, seriously, three lug wheels? Japanese superminis and micro cars seem to have gotten along fine for the past forty years with four!)

But a ressurection of the Roadster by an outside group would probably not be saddled by development costs (Merc took the brunt of the loss already) or the need to price the car like a Merc... so if they can actually get this thing off the ground, and hopefully price the car at 2/3rds of the original, they might have something here.

All the Smart Roadster needs is a few more "retro" touches... headlamps, for one (which might bring costs down a bit if they're off-the-shelf ones), get rid of the three lug hardware, get some cheap Japanese 100 pcd four studs on there, fer chrissakes'... simplify the targa top (but it's probably okay as it is...

No "clever" automatics or sequential manuals, please. No overcomplicated small turbos. Just keep the base 800, and stick in Japanese superbike lumps for the more powerful versions, and you'll have a hit on your hands.