THIS sort of thing doesn’t happen very often in the car industry.

A car-maker keen to enhance its image as a maker of performance-oriented machines is inhibited by front-drive engine packaging. Solution: convert the whole thing to a rear-drive configuration and source a suitably powerful V8 from another manufacturer.

This, in essence, is what MG Rover has done with the understated but dramatically engineered ZT 260. And the British engineers have done a good job, producing a car with no flaws in its ability to deliver power, as well as a nicely balanced chassis designed to appeal to the enthusiast.

If there’s a problem, it’s that hot V8 sedans are pretty common in Australia, and that signs of British inattention to build quality tend to show through in niggling ways.