Austin Montego 2.0

...new car - "The New Austin Montego"

It's a cool ad: A bloke arrives at the office car park in his new Montego to find it busy and overcrowded but an empty space at the other end catches his eye. With a wry smirk he drops a cog and performs a series of impressive driving stunts - he leaps a wall, does a nifty 180 in a narrow gap, drives on two wheels and finishes by handbrake-turning it neatly into the one remaining space, ...
...to keep the weight down Austin Rover fashioned the Montego out of steel so thin you could read through it which means that about 10% of the car dissolves every time you drive through a puddle. This is probably the reason why there's so few Montegos left, certainly ones in anything resembling good condition.

The equipment list is quite good, especially on the top of the range models - electric windows and sunroof, central locking, ABS, ... more

Pop quiz: It's some time in the mid 1980's. Dad's not back from foundry yet, mom's having a brand-new Afro-perm down at the 'Curl Up & Dye' salon and your big sister's dancing round in legwarmers to the 'Flashdance' album. You, while channel hopping between Scott and Charlene's wedding, Bob could-I-have-a-pee-please Holness and a Humphrey Bogart film on some new-fangled station called 'Channel 4' (pfft, can't imagine that coming to anything!), happen across a TV commercial for a new car - "The New Austin Montego"

It's a cool ad: A bloke arrives at the office car park in his new Montego to find it busy and overcrowded but an empty space at the other end catches his eye. With a wry smirk he drops a cog and performs a series of impressive driving stunts - he leaps a wall, does a nifty 180 in a narrow gap, drives on two wheels and finishes by handbrake-turning it neatly into the one remaining space, much to the applause of his co-workers who have taken to hanging out of the office windows to watch.
After taking the customary bow, the bloke then gets his jacket stuck in the car door.

"Wow!", you think to yourself, "How cool is that?" and you make it your sole intention in life to one day own a Montego. But, with overtime at the foundry being cut short, mum's ever-changing hairdos and sister's university fund getting bigger all the time, spending the seven thousand pounds needed to acquire a brand new Montego is pretty much out of the question. This was back in the days when seven thousand pounds was a lot of money. So, pop quiz: What do you do?
What do you do?

Answer?
You wait nineteen years for them to go totally out of fashion and 90% of them have been scrapped anyway and then you go down the pub and buy one off one of your mates for 75 quid and a packet of fags.

Not just any old Montego though, not your run-of-the-mill 1.6L, no sir-ee! Spike has to go for one of the sporty MG models.
Not just any old MG though, not your ordinary 2.0L MG EFi, no sir-ee! Spike has to go for the full-on, flagship MG Turbo.

Now I've had some fast, fun motors in my time. Nothing flash, I ain't loaded or anything. In fact, I'm a dreaded 'white-van-man' by day so I don't really *need* a car or rely on one to get me to work and stuff so when I DO buy a car, it's as a weekend plaything, a toy, not as an essential means of transportation.
As a result, I'm free to pick and choose any outrageous old gas guzzler that takes my fancy and boy, I've had some proper dinosaurs - XR4x4s, 635 BMWs, V8 Rover SDi's, 2.8 Granadas - the lot. But here's the funny thing: this crappy old MG Montego that cost £75 is easily the fastest, most fiery, ferocious and unpredictable car of the lot. It's a madman, a hooligan, a wild animal, it'll put hairs on your chest-hairs - it's fantastic!

The ordinary MG EFi's didn't hang about either and this is basically the same car with the same engine but with a chuffin great big turbo booster bolted on the top. That turbo really makes its presence felt too. On hard acceleration the fuel injection system takes care of things at first with a fairly smooth, progressive surge of power but then the turbo kicks in at about 3000rpm and the Monty suddenly takes off like a nymphomaniac chasing a rubber bullet - it absolutely flies! As you scream past 70mph in 2nd gear with cries of "JEEEE-SUS!" from any passengers unfortunate enough to be tagging along for the ride, the turbo booster starts to whine like a jet engine and I'm reliably informed that if you really push it you can even get flames shooting out the exhaust pipe! Now that's what I call fun!

The trouble is, Montegos have all the handling characteristics of a shopping trolley with a busted wheel. Cars with this much power really need to be rear-wheel-drive for maximum control but the Montego is front-wheel-drive only meaning it's much more liable to understeer and on hard acceleration the front wheels are often scrambling for grip, especially in the wet. The suspension is too soft too. Granted, this makes the car more comfortable to drive on long hauls but it also means that there's way too much bodyroll on fast, twisty roads. Fling it into a bend with too much gusto and that plastic circular device in front of you is not so much a steering wheel as something to hang on to for dear life as you slew sideways with smoke pouring off the tyres.
However, if you CAN manage to keep the thing under control then the Montego is an extremely agile car - all those acrobatics on the TV commercial were done for real with an unmodified 1.6L so imagine what an MG Turbo can do?
Personally, I haven't mastered the driving-on-two-wheels trick yet but the reverse 180 and the handbrake turn I've got down to a fine art!

By the way, I'm lucky enough to live a few miles away from an old RAF airfield with 3 miles of abandoned runway for me to loon about on and the only pigs I have to worry about are the four-legged variety that may wander onto the runway from a nearby farmers field so please... don't try this at home boys and girls (I've always wanted to say that!).

Ok, time to put my sensible trousers on. Apart from the fact that it goes like sh*t off a hot shovel, the MG Montego doesn't really have a lot going for it. One of the major problems is rust. In an effort to keep the weight down Austin Rover fashioned the Montego out of steel so thin you could read through it which means that about 10% of the car dissolves every time you drive through a puddle. This is probably the reason why there's so few Montegos left, certainly ones in anything resembling good condition.

The equipment list is quite good, especially on the top of the range models - electric windows and sunroof, central locking, ABS, power steering and the pièce de résistance in those days was a talking computer but sadly most of the executive goodies don't work anymore. In the case of the talking computer this wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing because it has a really annoying, monotone voice that keeps repeating to you the most inane of details - bit like Robbie the robot from The Forbidden Planet: "Fuel cap unlocked... drivers window open... speed limit exceeded... will fifty gallons be sufficient Sir?" etc... but it would be nice if the central locking unlocked ALL the doors instead of just two. It would also be nice if the electric aerial worked too, that way I'd be able to listen to the radio but at the moment if I want music while I'm driving I have to do the singing myself.

As I said earlier reliability and efficiency are not really my main priorities when buying a car which is a good job really because neither are brilliant with the Monty. The basic Montegos with the 1.3 and 1.6 carburettor engines aren't too bad but once you start adding fancy electronic injection sytems and gigantic turbo boosters then reliability goes flying out the window.
Fuel efficiency? Unless you've got the 1.3, forget it. Most Monty's return on average about 30mpg but in the MG Turbo you'll be lucky to get 20mpg, especially in hooligan-mode.

But - and this is a BIG 'but' - all of the MG Turbo's faults, the rust, the handling, the fuel economy and that dreadful talking computer are forgotten in a flash the instant the turbo booster kicks in. It launches the car forward as if it's attached to the horizon by a huge invisible bungee. It really is incredibly, shockingly, face-distortingly fast and to experience it is to live.... briefly!

The best thing about it though is the fact that it only cost me 75 quid so I have absolutely no qualms about thrashing it to within an inch of it's life. Less than an inch actually - I usually end up killing most of the cars I buy but at least they go out with a bang! And if I DO happen to end up in a ditch or wrapped round a tree then I just have to go down the pub with £75 and buy another gas-guzzling old nail. Simple!

So, if you're looking for a sensible family runabout that's cheap to run and won't let you down, look elsewhere.
However, if you're looking for a cheap-as-chips thrash machine to race around in at the weekend, one that'll give you more slippy, slidy fun than a gallon of baby-oil then the MG Montego could well be the answer.

It's just occured to me actually that this would be an ideal car to take to one of those 'track days' that are held at the various racing circuits around the country. It will probably be the cheapest car on the track and you'll no doubt see a few raised eyebrows and wry smiles from all those flash gits in their gleaming, 30-grand fanny magnets but I promise you it will give all but the most powerful of sportscars a real run for their money.

Highly recommended.... for hooligans.
Not recommended at all.... for everyone else.
And remember.... drive safely kids!

Ta for reading.
Spike.

 

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