The act of shoving V8s into places they don’t belong is fast becoming a lost art, at least here in Britain. Now, over in America, you can still buy an eight-cylinder Lexus IS that hasn’t been all F’d up, a Dodge Durango with a 717hp Hellcat engine dropped in it (much like the Jeep Grand Cherokee Trackhawk we recently featured) and Cadillac will sell you its CT5-V with a 6.2-litre supercharged V8 with 668hp and a manual gearbox. Yes, we do get the latest V8 Mustang here - and we should consider ourselves lucky we do - it’s not nearly as potent as the one our chums in the States get.
To be fair, you can still buy ‘British’ and have a V8 in 2025, but you’ll need a sizeable budget to do so. Like, Aston Martin or Bentley big. And while Land Rover still champions the mighty V8, you’ll again be paying mega bucks to get one. Jaguar, however, has ceased combustion car production altogether and says it will never return. Vauxhall, meanwhile, ditched the VXR brand years ago, along with all the cheap, Aussie V8s that came with it, and the MG of today only shares its name with the MG of yesteryear. Certainly, there’s no chance the Chinese-run brand will come up with a bargain V8 saloon like this ZT SE 260.
The V8 made for the perfect range-topper for a company running on a shoestring budget 20-odd years ago. Most firms, MG included, would simply import a known-quantity V8, usually from the States, that’d be inexpensive to buy in bulk and reliable enough to not clog up their service centres. For MG, that meant taking a 4.6-litre Ford Modular V8 and chucking it into the front of the ZT, with Rover adding the same powertrain to the 75 later on. This delivered (an admittedly quite modest) 260hp and 302lb ft of torque, but it was enough to get five-speed manual cars from a standstill to 62mph in 6.2 seconds and on to a top speed of 155mph - or bang on what German rivals were capable of doing (albeit with a limiter in place).
While going to Ford for a V8 saved precious pennies on engine development, MG Rover still had to engineer the ZT and 75 platform to accept a rear-wheel drive layout. Modifications were made to allow a driveshaft to run down to the back of the car and a new rear suspension layout was developed to accept Ford's powertrain. And though the V8 cars were built on the same production line as standard models, they’d be temporarily removed for the necessary chassis upgrades, have the V8 slotted in and then returned for final assembly.
Unsurprisingly, V8 models accounted for a fraction of ZT sales, but MG still shifted several hundred of them over a two-year production run. So there was an appetite for them, and it’s not hard to see why. The ZT was always a sporty-looking thing and could look really quite smart in the right colour, this example in pearlescent Monogram Aqua Purpleen (what an incredible name) perhaps being the greatest spec of them all. Flipflop paint isn’t easy to pull off, as many Max Power demo cars of this era prove, but it looks just right on the ZT.
Spec aside, there are plenty more green lights here, too. Mileage is on the relatively low side at 80,000 (it’s a 21-year-old car, remember) and there’s stacks of service history to go along with it, as well as a recent MOT. And while a £9,970 asking price may seem a little punchy, it’s a good 50 per cent off this 30,000-mile ZT-T and only a smidgen more than this box-fresh 120. True, that sort of money also gets you into a Jaguar XJR, but they’re vastly more complicated and a whole lot more expensive when something goes wrong. The ZT is properly basic by comparison, but you’ll be too busy going sideways to really care.
SPECIFICATION | MG ZT 260 SE
Engine: 4,601cc V8
Transmission: five-speed manual, rear-wheel drive
Power (hp): 260@5,000rpm
Torque (lb ft): 302@4,000rpm
MPG: 21
CO2: 314g/km
Year registered: 2004
Recorded mileage: 80,000
Price new: £32,705
Yours for: £9,970
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