GTP Cool Wall: 2003 MG SV-R. Voting Closed

  • Thread starter Joey D
  • 47 comments
  • 3,462 views

MG SV-R

  • Total voters
    80
  • Poll closed .
The driveline of this car is right, I've never heard of it before, every MG I've ever seen I've never liked. I thought they'd be better with a V8. Like I said, 5.0, rwd, 'Nuff said, COOL is what I say, COOL enough, even though the side vent looks like trash, mostly the whole car does, but it must be at least fun to drive, so COOL! I'm basing this all off the driveine, whatever, it probably is not as good as I'm giving it credit, I doubt I'd be unhappy if it were gifted to me soo....👍
 
LSX
I'm basing this all off the driveine, whatever, it probably is not as good as I'm giving it credit, I doubt I'd be unhappy if it were gifted to me soo....👍
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Its essentially the Terminator Cobra from a few polls ago, only not as fast (!), not as powerful (!!) and way more expensive.
 
homeforsummer
It was a production car, yes. Apparently 64 were produced.
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Still is. The MG XPower SV finished at 64 cars in 2005, but the car and its name were bought for £2m by William Riley and relaunched as the MG XPower WR - exactly the same car - in 2008. I think another 8 have been built and he has quite a few more orders.

Toronado
not as powerful
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Not as powerful? Not as powerful?!

The supercharged 4.6 Cobra was rated at 390hp. The supercharged 4.6 SV-S and non-supercharged 5.0 SV-R were rated at 385hp (which is close enough in my book to be classed as identical). We won't mention the 410hp ClubSport, the supercharged 5.0 SV-RS or the factory approved thousand horsepower version...
 
LSX
The driveline of this car is right, I've never heard of it before, every MG I've ever seen I've never liked. I thought they'd be better with a V8.
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Well, there have been MG's with a V8's before:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MG_MGB#MGB_GT_V8

I don't think the MGB or the Midget look too bad, overall I quite like the older MG cars.
This however doesn't really scream "MG" to me but I voted Sub Zero because there is absolutely no reason to like it beyond it making no sense whatsoever for a company like Rover to be building in 2000/2001. I like madness 👍
 
Sub Zero, because of the massive risk MG Rover took when they built it. They knackered everything up later on, but still. Then you get to the fact that you could order it from factory with 1,000bhp. That and it's one of the only British muscle cars in a while. I don't see how it's uncool really.
 
I don't care how good it is to drive, it looks pig ugly and probably isn't built right. It's for people who aren't cool but buy this because they think its cool - but it isn't and it diminshes their social status even more - therefore, not cool.
 
80Y 2C2
It's for people who aren't cool but buy this because they think its cool - but it isn't and it diminshes their social status even more
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...eh? I'm sorry, but if you have £75k to spend on a sports car and your sole reason to purchase a car is to look cool, why the hell would you buy an SV when you could buy a Porsche 911 or a flash BMW?

People who bought the SV were, if anything, the complete opposite of what you've just described - buying it for what it is, rather than how it makes you look.
 
Famine
The supercharged 4.6 Cobra was rated at 390hp. The supercharged 4.6 SV-S and non-supercharged 5.0 SV-R were rated at 385hp (which is close enough in my book to be classed as identical).
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The Terminator was very underrated. It also had more torque at a lower RPM. Furthermore, based on the few figures I've been able to scrounge up (did no one test this car?), the SV-R is nearly a second-and-a-half slower to 60 than the Terminator (a considerably heavier car), making me think that the SV-R's "385" might have been rather optimistic by itself (based on how slow the Mangusta was, its pretty obvious that the normal SV's claimed acceleration numbers are a total fantasy). Heck, the share's-the-same-engine-with-the-normal-SV 2001 SVT Cobra is faster than MG's claimed figures for the SV-R even are; and the down-on-power-to-the-standard-SV 2003 Mach 1 is even faster still.
I'm actually having a hard time wrapping my mind around how the SV can be so slow when its made up completely of drivetrain parts from a faster-yet-heavier car.
In hindsight, this confusion also applies to the Mangusta, because that was also considerably slower than it should have been compared to what it got its drivetrain from.
Famine
We won't mention the 410hp ClubSport, the supercharged 5.0 SV-RS or the factory approved thousand horsepower version...
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None of those would be the SV-R though.
 
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Toronado
The Terminator was very underrated. It also had more torque at a lower RPM. Furthermore, based on the few figures I've been able to scrounge up (did no one test this car?), the SV-R is nearly a second-and-a-half slower to 60 than the Terminator (a considerably heavier car), making me think that the SV-R's "385" might have been rather optimistic by itself.
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Gearing? The SV-R was geared to 195mph.

Toronado
None of those would be the SV-R though.
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Considering there were 64 cars made in the original SV range and no two were the same, I wonder exactly what "the SV-R" would be...
 
Aye, but that's just the final x top. The SV might have a very tall 1st - or have a piece of crap drivetrain eating all the crank power.
 
I looked at the ratios for both, and now I'm just confused:
Code: 
1st:                 3.38:1
2nd:                 2.00:1
3rd:                 1.32:1
4th:                 1.00:1
5th:                 0.73:1
Reverse:             3.38:1
Final drive:         3.46:1
Those are the ratios for the standard SV. I did a bit of math and determined that its geared to go 211, so I'm guessing they didn't make them any wider for the SV-R.
Linky.

Code: 
1st:                 3.37:1
2nd:                 1.99:1
3rd:                 1.33:1
4th:                 1.00:1
5th:                 0.67:1
Reverse:             3.22:1
Final drive:         3.27:1
Those are the ratios for the 1999-2001 Mustang SVT Cobra that the Qvale and SV sourced the drivetrain from. As said, they spit out a theoretical 237 for the top speed.
Linky.

That car, post-recall, was faster than the SV-Rs claimed figures from the factory, and I cannot understand why. And now it is bothering me.
 
Different wheel sizes? That's the final point in the gearing.
 
Yeah, I took those into account when determining the gear speeds. But how would the MG's bigger feet (265/40 ZR18s vs 245/45ZR 17s) hurt acceleration when the MG also has considerably less crappy tires?
 
Larger rolling radius = longer gearing = slower acceleration

Ideally we need whp of both too. After all, crank power doesn't move you anywhere.
 

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