MG ZT. Diesel, 50mpg, solid BMW lump good for many a mile 115 or 135 bhp available off the peg, but tunable for more including a tuning box.
^ One of these. I have the TF, which is the two seater, with the 135 1.8 engine in it. Don't let the nay sayers put you off the MG's, they don't actually blow up every time you nip to the shops. I've found my engine to be very reliable, a good runner and quite powerful. The 1.8T version of the ZT is supposed to be an absolute beast. I believe they have to limit the torque to stop them shredding gearboxes Cheers Enterobsidan
Not really had much to do with the ZT, so wouldn't want to say one way or the other. The TF, being one, has sports car handling, and it's firm but not over the top. The seats are quite comfortable to sit in, and the ride is quite nice. Only problem would be lack of rear seats for the dogs. That said, you can remove the roof, so the dogs would love that! Cheers Enterobsidian
They used the PG1 gearbox, which is the same on as used in the Lotus. It's actually quite a strong box as standard. An uprated box would have been really expensive to manufacture. It also wouldn't have been much use, as the 1.8T was developed to be economical for fleet use. Someone planting it everywhere wouldn't do the bills much good either.
The TF is cut from different cloth when compared to the other MG's. Completely different cloth. The K series engine is a beautiful design but flawed with stupid plastic gasket guides that were later replaced with steel guides that fixed said problem. So for the sake of the price of a gasket kit and a day of your weekend you can get a decent TF. You'll find a lot of MG's with about 50K on the clock as that happened to be the sort of mileage they usually popped. All these things aside, it's an MG based on a Rover which isn't the best combination. When I think of build quality I can't help but think...Italian with out the beauty or design...
On the ZT I'd say it is quite firm, but then it is a big old bus and you don't want it wallowing around corners. That said I do 160 miles every other day and don't find it uncomfortable in the least.
Mine is fine, 50 K miles in 2 years and never let me down, but then it hasa BMW engine in a car built under the ownership of BMW, a far cry from the bad old days of Rover past.