At 11:23 am 2/7/97 -0500, Jay Quinn wrote:
>I picked up on a thread yesterday, that reminded me of other threads in the
>recent past. It was something to the effect of our cars are being bought
>and shipped back oversees?
>Where is the demand? Why is there a demand for these LH car's? How much
>are they paying for these cars? What kind of condition are they aquireing
>these cars? What are the most popular ones? Who is he buyer and exporter?
Quite a number, especially the rubber nose models, are being imported into
Australia where they are being converted to right hand drive. The main
incentives are that they meet most of the Australian regulations regarding
side intrusion bars and so forth and they are dirt cheap compared to the
average price of an MGB roadster here of about $US10,000. To be used on
Australian roads cars must meet the anti pollution and crash protection
measures regulated at the time of manufacture of the vehicle. These
measures came in from 1972 (the year production of the MGB stopped here).
Thus importers are virtually unable to import later model cars from the UK
for resale here. The downside is that the US specification engines are
very poor performers compared with the UK spec which had higher compression
ratios, no anti-pollution gear and were fitted with the better performing
twin SUs. The result has been a generally poor image for the rubbernose
models in this country, which is a pity since they offer the best, safest
and comfortable motoring of all the MGB variants.
regards,
Graham
97 MGF
Graham McCann Rivett, ACT. Australia
gmccann@pcug.org.au
Phone/Fax: +61 6 2889055
______________________________________________________________
|