NAC TF Nose

Was the NAC TF nose used in China as well as the UK? Were they made in the UK and shipped out to China or were there two suppliers?

Were UK bodyshells made here or were they Chinese imports?

I think it was actually the best frontal treatment of the TFs and the MGF too. And I reckon they ought to reintroduce it!

Off the top of my head, the bodyshell was made in China (and doubtless the nose too). Given that UK sales were far higher than Chinese ones and continued afterwards, this must have been a strange situation...

...I think there is a queue of people hoping for a new sportscar...

It had a far higher UK content than the 6; I always felt that was madness to set up a whole new UK supply chain, then 3 years later tell them all to bugger off again. Not to mention rather ungrateful...

I bet they look at the TF sales figures from 08/09/10 and get wistful...

The Chinese ones have the original MGR nose.

The UK ones used Chinese bodyshells but unlike the MG6 they arrived bare, initially unpainted but later they swapped to painted since the Chinese did a much better job.

I'd heard that about the UK paintshop. That is another mystery - this wonderful paintshop which is ready to use and state-of-the-art.. well it won't be by the time they get round to using it.

The TF wasn't selling brilliantly at the end, but I always thought it was a mistake to kill it off then. Going from a rather sparse one model range to, erm, a rather sparse one model range... it's not as if the two cars overlapped each other's market segment.

Morris Motors wrote:I'd heard that about the UK paintshop. That is another mystery - this wonderful paintshop which is ready to use and state-of-the-art.. well it won't be by the time they get round to using it.

The TF wasn't selling brilliantly at the end, but I always thought it was a mistake to kill it off then. Going from a rather sparse one model range to, erm, a rather sparse one model range... it's not as if the two cars overlapped each other's market segment.

The UK paintshop is fine, the problem was that it wasn't worth starting it up for a few tens of TFs so they painted them by hand as they used to for the monogram cars. I think the problems were limited to paint not sticking properly to plastic bumpers etc. so it may just have been an excuse to cut costs when they found they were only going to sell small numbers.

Wasn't the N-Series engine used in the TF "only" Euro IV compliant and since the MG3SW went out of production only used in the TF?

patpending wrote:Wasn't the N-Series engine used in the TF "only" Euro IV compliant and since the MG3SW went out of production only used in the TF?

I think the MG3, MG3SW, MG TF and MG7 all stopped using the N-Series at the same time. The MG7 swapped to using the Kavachi, the MG3 swapped to the NSE and got a new body, the MG3 SW got replace with the MG3 XROSS. The production lines for the N-Series started producing NSE engines and that left the MG TF with no engine and dependant on a stockpile although it actually ceased production too. The UK MG TF Euro IV version may also have been used in the MG3 for Beijing which had higher emission standards than the rest of China?

Why didn't the TF just get the Kavachi? It's essentially the same and it's Euro compliant as it's in the MG6.

Morris Motors wrote:Why didn't the TF just get the Kavachi? It's essentially the same and it's Euro compliant as it's in the MG6.

Probably because they weren't selling enough, but also because the turbo charger wouldn't fit and would cause heat issues and the non-turbo version is not EU compliant, the non-turbo version is also not the same, it has dual cam phasing instead of solid cams so although it would be an improvement it would need to go through all the testing again, it would probably also need some tuning since it doesn't work that well at high revs and in a TF that would be expected.

Ah I see, that would seem to kill it.