The Way We Were

Lord Street, Southport, Merseyside, July 1985

MG MAKES A SUPERCAR

If you want proof that Austin-Rover’s vision for MG extended beyond hottedup Metros and Montegos, look no further than this mid-engined slice of exotica, introduced at 1985’s Frankfurt Motor Show. Beneath the F16 fighter jet-inspired styling it was all Metro 6R4, with a 250bhp mild tune version of the rally car’s V6. While there was initial talk of a production run it remained a one-off show car, ending up at the British Motor Museum. It did prove that there was still interest in MG sports cars, which helped give momentum to what eventually became the MGF a decade later.

SEEING RED

On 17 January, British Telecom’s chief executive dropped a bit of a bombshell – from then on it was starting to phase out the nation’s network of red telephone boxes, in favour of the cheaper KX100 with its more modern glass frontage. The familiar K6 had been around since the mid 1930s, but this wasn’t the first time it’d been under threat; the General Post Office designed a replacement as far back as 1959, the K7, but this never made it past the prototype stage, and a 1981 attempt to have them repainted BT’s corporate yellow prompted the intervention of the House of Lords.

A VIEW TO A KILL

Even Roger Moore’s biggest fans will struggle to say this was his finest hour as 007 – but once you’d got over a cover of the Beach Boys’ California Girls being used as the soundtrack for a ski chase there were at least some

great cars in his final Bond outing. The Parisian car chase in a Renault 11 taxi is well documented but it’s also worth keeping an eye out for the early Jeep Cherokee, C4-gen Corvette and Renault Fuego Turbo that make a few brief appearances, and for the RollsRoyce Silver Cloud II that sadly ends up being pushed into a nearby lake. With Bond inside, of course…