Chris Elvin

A year (and a half) with the MG ZT 190

A much delayed one-year owner’s report

As I write this, it is 5 months to the day since I promised DTW’s esteemed editor a one-year report on living with what was, at purchase, an unusually pristine and little-used example of MG’s last-chance, last-shout, last-hurrah (and doomed from the start) sports saloon. My attempt at winning the ‘most delayed DTW article’ award aside, how has 18 months with the ZT190 been?

To start with, the ZT has been, by a comfortable margin, the unluckiest car I have ever known: In the short time I have owned it, it has been crashed into by other drivers twice (at low speeds but still necessitating costly repairs), has lost two tyres to a fight with a sharp piece of metal and just plain lost one of the brackets holding the exhaust in place. To its credit, not even the last of these could be said to be the car’s fault (a replacement exhaust fitted before purchase had not been screwed on properly) and only the tyre puncture left me stranded. Continue reading “A year (and a half) with the MG ZT 190”

How To Be a Motoring Enthusiast in the 21st Century – Part 3

Does this story have a happy ending?

In part one of this little series, I sought to share the thought process arising (inevitably, it seemed to me) from the moral uncertainty surrounding enthusiasm for cars powered by the internal combustion engine in this age of global warming. In part two, we took a trip into a possible future resulting from the current state of affairs. Both articles led to a healthy discussion in the comments and, following part two’s diversion into utopian fiction (that many found to be dystopian), I want to try to provide some sort of conclusion to this story. Can it still end well?

Firstly it is important to note that the day in the life of possible-future-me is an imagining; one of many possible futures, rather than a prediction, though I do think it reasonably plausible. Secondly, when we Continue reading “How To Be a Motoring Enthusiast in the 21st Century – Part 3”

How To Be a Motoring Enthusiast in the 21st Century – Part 2

Allow me, if you will, dear reader, to take you on a brief sojourn into the future.

The year is 2051 and, as I approach my mid seventies, I hope to be able to retire in a few years and spend more time on my various hobbies. Today is a prelude to that happy prospect, in the form of a paid day off work as part of the European West Central Union sponsored ExperiencedWorkersKeepVITAL! programme and I have arranged a treat for myself in the form of a morning’s participation in a driving day at the Zandvoort racing circuit on the west coast of the Netherlands (not that you get to Continue reading “How To Be a Motoring Enthusiast in the 21st Century – Part 2”

How To Be a Motoring Enthusiast in the 21st Century – Part 1

Maintaining the faith in a changing world.

The past several years (broadly coinciding with the discovery and eventual contribution to Driven to Write) have been a period of rediscovering my enthusiasm for cars; their history, engineering, aesthetics and the experience of driving them. More recently, however, I have found myself troubled with doubts as to the potential future of such enthusiasm and increasingly, by questions regarding the moral status of our collective hobby.

If the above sounds a little melodramatic, consider the following: Whilst there are questions to which no definitive answer is possible – the value of which lying more in the discussions they prompt, rather than in finding one true solution – such as what constitutes the good life, free will versus determinism and why my smartphone came with two entirely separate SMS apps installed by default, questions relating to the environmental impact of the internal combustion engine are, to most rational persons, not amongst these.

Given the scientific consensus around the contribution of fossil fuels to climate change, it is clear that we must Continue reading “How To Be a Motoring Enthusiast in the 21st Century – Part 1”

Last Chance Saloon: MG Edition

Initial impressions of the Rover 75’s rebellious younger sibling.

Regular DTW readers may by now recognise my curious obsession with the ill-fated products of the late MG Rover company and may also recall a recent report on spending nearly a year with a 2.5 litre Rover 75 Sterling. At the time, I intimated that the Rover had been replaced with something related that was just a little bit rare and special.

Whilst I came very close to Continue reading “Last Chance Saloon: MG Edition”

Rover 75: Long(ish) Term Test

Almost a year with a Rover 75 2.5 litre V6.

I have, on a number of previous occasions, regaled readers of with tales of my odd obsession with Rover’s last (chance) saloon and a number of you were kind enough to express interest in an update regarding my second example of the breed; a 2002-registered (though built in 2001) 2.5 V6 Sterling, known as Connoisseur in the UK market. This car was purchased almost a year ago and has been in regular use as my sole form of motorised transport since then.

My beautifully blue Rover was blessed with two apparently-careful previous owners, who had not neglected its maintenance, and had, for its very nearly 20 years of age, a low kilometerage, to which I have added a good eleven thousand or so. Said car is also one of the most over-specified conveyances I have ever encountered – its original owner having ordered the topmost trim level, added a dark blue personal line leather interior (a lovely thing to have on the 75) and then ticked every other cost-option box on the order form for good measure. Continue reading “Rover 75: Long(ish) Term Test”

Country Club or Brand Values?

Today we muse upon the supposed relation between cars and their countries of origin.

Many years ago, in a British car magazine, I read an interview with an American car company executive about his employer’s attempts to crack the European car market (this was back in the days of efforts like Chrysler’s Neon sub-brand) in which he waxed lyrical on the subject of typically American virtues such as spaciousness in cars. Given that, certainly at the time, my primary association with the concept American car was the TARDIS-in-reverse quality of a typical land-yacht cabin, it wasn’t a terribly convincing argument. Nor did the executive in question seem to Continue reading “Country Club or Brand Values?”

Staring At Screens

The curious unimportance of visibility in modern car design.

2021 Cadillac Escalade. Image: GM Authority

An oft-noted, yet insufficiently regretted, development in car design in the past 20-odd years has been the ever-rising waistline of the average automobile; a development that, combined with increasingly thick window pillars, has had a seriously negative impact on visibility out of the car (not to mention the effect on interior ambiance).

Looking around at the flanks of cars nowadays, one might be tempted to Continue reading “Staring At Screens”

Recovering A Dream

Oops, I did it again… A belated defence of the Rover 75.

My first contribution to Driven to Write, in the spring of 2018, was to recount the tale of my replacing a V6 Rover 75, following a brief period of ownership, with a new twin cylinder Fiat Panda (as different a car as one could imagine). It was a tale of disillusionment and naivety; of an enthusiast who had not driven regularly for many years aspiring to a car he had admired when new, which turned out to be not entirely suited to his present circumstances.

After a kind reception by the readers of this site, I wrote a follow-up article in which I reviewed my tuned twin-air turbo Panda in more detail; a car that delighted me daily for two and a half years, so much so that I could Continue reading “Recovering A Dream”

Little Monster

Contributor, Chris Elvin returns to our pages to establish whether his Panda really eats shoots and leaves.

In the Spring of 2018, Driven to Write published the article ‘Small Is Beautiful… and Why Modern Cars Are (usually) Better’ describing my experience running a Rover 75 and its eventual replacement by a Fiat Panda TwinAir Turbo. A number of readers were kind enough to comment that they would like to read more about my experiences with the Panda so, now that I have been running it daily for over a year, I thought I would Continue reading “Little Monster”

Small Is Beautiful… and Why Modern Cars Are (usually) Better

Sometimes driving the dream isn’t quite what it is cracked up to be. New contributor Chris Elvin outlines why he’s done a’ Rovering…

Despite passing my driving test shortly after my seventeenth birthday and having been enthusiastic about cars from toddling age, I managed to retain the position of being the only person in my immediate family never to have owned a car until quite recently, in my late 30s.

A combination of city-centre living and having spent most of my adult life in another country to that in which I learned to Continue reading “Small Is Beautiful… and Why Modern Cars Are (usually) Better”