The Mighty MG F

A journey through France with the little convertible that could

In early 2017, I learned that I would have to – or rather, had the opportunity to – move to Toulouse for my training. As I was still driving my BMW 5 Series at the time, and I had heard about French parking and driving habits (foreshadowing) and feared the lack of space in the old town centres, the decision was made to buy a small, cheap and cheerful car that I would keep for one year only.

Naturally, since I would be staying during the summer in the south of France, I started looking into roadsters or convertibles. A smarter man would have probably chosen one of the first options I was looking into, like a Mazda MX5, BMW Z3, Toyota MR2 or Peugeot 306.

And indeed, there it was, only a couple of kilometres away, ready to be viewed any time, a black 2001 MG F. After having owned 3 Italian motorcycles I should know better than to trust the craftsmanship of a country that gave birth to British Leyland, but I thought surely it will survive a single year without issue.

So I called the seller and went for a viewing a couple of days later. It was actually a couple who owned four MG Fs and TFs and were now looking to part with one of them. I was assured the head gasket had already been replaced and the Hydragas suspension (the MG F uses gas-filled shocks that are linked together front to back, where the gas takes on the role of the spring in a traditional suspension, like the one used on the later MG TF) had been recently refilled. Undeterred by the six previous owners and a bit of rust on the quarter panel, I bought the car for roughly 2.000€ and brought it home on temporary plates.

Unfortunately I quickly learned that one of the previous six owners had used the wrong kind of coolant, so when I added the correct one, it reacted with the old fluid and turned into a muddy brown mess. The only way to easily drain everything again was by disconnecting one of the rubber hoses on the bottom of the car, which promptly tore the ancient rubber. From that point onwards the hose was “temporarily” held together by means of three hose clamps right next to each other.

This brings us to the biggest problem of the MG F. The car features a mid-engine layout, which is amazing in terms of handling and extremely unique, especially in this price range.
However, this means that the radiator is all the way up front, while the engine and thermostat live at the rear, with a long (and rust-prone) run of piping underneath the car connecting them. MG/Rover neglected to adapt the cooling system to not being housed in a conventional front-engine layout, leading to almost “harmonic oscillations” of the water temperature.

Every so often, a huge amount of cold water from the front radiator will rush into the very hot engine cooking in its tiny cubbyhole in the back of the car, in a process akin to quenching a hot pan with running water over and over again. This repeated thermal shock eventually causes the head gasket to fail prematurely, a weakness caused simply by poor engineering.

I chose to stop over in Orléans for one night, which split the trip evenly in half. In a more comfortable car I might have driven the 12-14 hours in one go, but l quickly learned that the reason for recently refilling the aforementioned Hydragas suspension before selling the car was that it was apparently leaking quite rapidly, leaving the car with virtually no suspension whatsoever.
On the smooth French toll roads this was no problem at all, but around town or through Belgium the car regularly sounded like it was one bump away from finally rattling itself completely apart. This, combined with the wind blowing through all window seals, made for a pretty tiring driving experience.

The drive itself was pretty uneventful, apart from some stressful experiences at some toll gates that would refuse to take any of the cards in my wallet and the oil and water temperature gauges often sitting at worrying levels. The K-Series engine used in this car was developed originally to partially sit in the airflow through the front engine bay of typical cars, to provide additional cooling of the oil sump. In the MG F, the engine in the middle of the car gets barely any ventilation at all, and combined with a tired, dirty cooling loop, seeing oil temperatures upwards of 130°C is the norm.

Nonetheless, with every kilometer traveled further south the spirits began to lift, as the scenery turned from wet greens into dry sparse vegetation and the sun was blasting down, even in mid October. I arrived without any trouble and settled in for the year.

As top ups became more frequent, I had to face my fears and pull out the oil dipstick which immediately confirmed what I had avoided confronting.

On the end of the stick, I found a caramel milkshake like substance, evidence that the head gasket had failed and the coolant was mixing together with the engine oil, forming a slurry.

First thing I tried was to call a local French shop specialized in British cars. After getting a quote of 1800€, roughly the value of the car, the decision was made to attempt the repair myself. After Christmas break, I started to place orders for the parts and necessary tools.

A very nice part of southern French culture is that nobody really cares what you do, as long as you don’t actively disturb anyone. The guards patrolling the property just greeted me as I was chest deep in the tiny engine compartment, wedged between the seats and the boot. Nobody took any issue with me pulling apart a car in what was basically a university car park. This would be unthinkable back home in Germany!

After a few days on and off, I managed to free the head from the engine and found the old gasket that was supposed to keep oil and water in the engine apart from each other. I had the option of switching over to a more modern and reliable multi-layer steel gasket right then, but this would require much more careful installation and tighter tolerances. Given the general unknown state of the engine and my basic tools, I settled for the original style of gasket, which would likely fail again at some point, but I made the decision that this would be a problem for future me.

The engine roared back to life – running terribly. I had mistakenly switched up two ignition wires, causing the motor to lump around on two out of four cylinders only. This was quickly addressed and the mighty MG was back in action.

What followed were many drives, often going nowhere in particular, discovering places, enjoying the southern French sun with the top down. I continued to watch the coolant levels and check the oil every single day, but the car was on the road again.

Of course, all was not trouble free. I was still driving a cheaply built British car after all. On a good day, I would find one or two drops of various fluids underneath my car. One bad morning, I found a puddle of oil, caused by the oil filter vibrating itself loose.

A quick inspection revealed a torn heater T-connector. This was again “temporarily” fixed with a full roll of self-vulcanizing tape around the area.

Only a few days later, we decided to go the opposite direction and make the journey towards the Atlantic coast. This trip would be even longer, taking us around 300km through wine valleys, mountain panoramas of the Pyrenees, and ending in the beautiful town of Biarritz. There is nothing quite like taking a trip in a classic convertible while enjoying some of the prettiest parts of France.

Countless drives, stopping for a swim, or even just shopping at the almost American-feeling malls. On one of these shopping trips, a woman pulled into the spot next to me with her brand new Golf, smashing her door into mine as she got out while I still sat in my car. There is something very liberating, though, about driving a cheap beater and just not caring about these little annoyances or being thrown into financial hardship by fixing any damage. Nothing could take away from the enjoyment of zipping around the South of France in this little nugget.

After a year without any accidents, the entire reason for not bringing my nice BMW, disaster struck. I was leaving a petrol station when suddenly the lady waiting to join the main road in front of me slammed her car into reverse and backed into the front of my MG without warning and before I even had the chance to honk. She would later explain that she forgot to take her car through the car wash before leaving.

Even though the damage was cosmetic, this left me in an unfortunate situation because I was about to leave Toulouse in just four days and would have to deal with foreign insurance from another country. Nevertheless, I had to pack and leave for the long trip back home.

In the end, the car was so full that I could barely shift into fifth gear, having to push back socks and shoes to do so, and I had just enough room to look over the mountain of stuff to check my right mirror.
The trip was again split in half, this time stopping in Compiègne (coincidentally at the same time Angela Merkel was there to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the end of World War 1).

Over the year, the car had gotten considerably louder on the inside, caused by the window seals further degrading and the roof not latching 100% correctly anymore. At 140 km/h, the noise was so bad that I resorted to putting in my headphones and listening to podcasts that way. Luckily, on the long, straight French toll roads, there was not much traffic at all and nothing much I would miss by protecting my hearing. For the most part, it was just trundling along, monitoring the temperatures creeping up on the gauges when going uphill and dropping again when going down, and checking coolant and oil condition at every stop.

That was until, out of nowhere, the already slightly dodgy roof sprung open. I found myself having to hold it shut by the handle while frantically scanning my belongings on the passenger seat for anything to solve my problem. In the end, the situation was – this time actually temporarily – rectified by shoving a white sock into the latch mechanism to provide just the extra bit of tension to keep the roof mostly closed for the rest of the drive.

The patch of “surface” rust on the rear turned out to give way to a gaping hole after a light press with one finger, the amount of temporary fixes started to add up. This was my sign that it was time to let go. I sold the car to the first willing buyer before it would turn into another headache for myself

Financially, I came out on top, through sheer luck if you want to call it that. The damage from the Mini Cooper reversing into my front end was actually paid out by insurance, and the amount was as much as the value of the car itself. Maybe French driving isn’t that bad after all.