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I thought it had been sounding a bit throaty lately. Mid-overtake it happened. ROARRR chink… chink… Oh bugger! That’s what too much use of the loud pedal does to an old car, or the very, very deafeningly LOUD pedal as it had now become. Turned out my MG had spat its new exhaust centre section [...]

I’ve got a new set of wheels, but the rest of the car is in Gloucestershire. Allow me to explain. A while ago I struck up an agreement with a friend whereby he’d loan me his Jaguar XJR for a few months, and all I had to do was stump up the cost of sorting [...]

Like every Rover 75 owner with a V6 I’ve been dreading the 6 year / 90,000 mile service. It’s supposedly a day-long job to renew the three timing belts and it seems most garages charge a price to match. With residuals on these cars being what they are your options are to dig deep and [...]

It’s a funny business, searching for a new car. Especially if you’re not quite sure what it is you’re looking for. When my father’s 2001 Focus developed a suspension noise that signalled a possible… wait for it… garage bill, it was instantly clear that it had to go. As far as he’s concerned, once a [...]

I thought a nice way to round off an unusually dry weekend would be to take the Maestro out for a quick run on some of the quiet, unclassified roads near my home while there was still about an hour of useful light to play with. The test route I normally use takes about 35 [...]

I think it’s probably fair to say I appreciate my comforts. Before I’d even put my MG Maestro on the road it had already inherited an impressive list of extras, many of which weren’t even available when it was new. Electric windows and sunroof, cross spoke alloy wheels and an upgraded stereo and CD changer [...]

I’ve been having far too much fun lately. Over the summer I’ve been able to pick and choose between four very different cars I’m running, I’ve spent more time than ever before travelling in them and I might even have indulged myself a bit more than I should have along the way. It’s all about [...]

It’s dawned on me that with so many other cars and projects competing for my attention I haven’t really said much about Maestros here lately. If I’m honest that’s because there’s been very little to report. When I haven’t been trying to send Allegros to Italy or Triumphs to Bromley, my faithful MG has been [...]

For the last month I’ve been driving my MG Maestro, which had to be disturbed from its winter hibernation early this year after my Rover Sterling developed an electrical problem. I retired the 100,000 mile Maestro from daily duties almost three years ago for the sake of long term preservation, but it really does deserve [...]

It never rains but it pours. The Maestro’s annual visit to the MOT centre always falls perilously close to the BMC/BL weekend in Peterborough. In recent years this minor complication hasn’t really worried me in the way you might expect it to because the car seems to have a habit of going straight through. Except [...]