The Making Of Mg's Monster

- Mike Taylor

The MG SV story can be said to have begun in May 2000, when Phoenix Venture Holdings – led by Nick Stephenson, John Towers, Peter Beale and John Edwards – acquired MG and Rover from BMW for a nominal £10 and began searching for partners to broaden the manufacturing base and model range. An opportunity came from an unlikely quarter when Bruce Qvale contacted Stephenson about forming a European concessionary for a V8 sports car.

Then called the Mangusta, it had started life as the De Tomaso Biguá, and Qvale’s proposal was to productionise it, suggesting that the car would make an ideal range-topper for MG. Despite having been styled by Marcello Gandini, the lines were questionable but its commercial attraction was obvious: it came with a dowry, having passed US homologation regs, while Qvale had also set up a manufacturing facility, the Qvale Automotive Group in Modena.

Smelling an opportunity, in 2000 MG Rover’s Consultant design director Peter Stevens was given the task of meeting Qvale for discussions. Chief executive Kevin Howe reputedly quipped that they should simply add MG badges to stimulate showroom traffic, but Stevens wasn’t keen. “People would have recognised it instantly,” he recalls, “it looked like a squashed toad.”

By the following year Qvale was struggling, so MG Rover pounced and bought the assets, a prototype and the manufacturing process to support it. Stevens then got to work using the homologated tub, suspension and drivetrain. Called the X80 and looking like a grown-up MG TF, the result was unveiled at the Frankfurt Show in September 2001, just three months after the purchase of the Qvale operation. Despite exuding a brutal edgy appearance, however, it clearly needed more work and so it was decided to involve the Aria Group in California.