Make: MG
Model: ZR EXPRESS TD
Registration: HD04 ZGC
Engine Size (cc): 1994
Transmission: 5 Speed Manual Diesel
Current Speedometer Reading: 111,210
Year of Manufacture: 2004
Date First Registered: 06/08/2004
MOT Expiry Date: 22/07/2024
Current V5: YES
Location: PICKERING
You can view from: Monday 21 August - Thursday 31 August 2023

Current V5 present. Paperwork includes various MOT certificates, invoices for work carried out, magazine clippings, and owner's club catalogues.

The vendor has supplied the following:

This is the 4 cylinder turbo and intercooled 113pshi L series diesel engine. Only 317 Express vans were built and of those only a handful and if our research is right there were as few as 71 of these 113 L series turbo diesels made. Our llocal mechanic is a fan of this engine from his time as a Land Rover Foreman and he likes this one! At the moment this is one of only 34 ZR Express vans still lawfully on the road and that includes all the petrol and diesel variants!

This van was in the same "family" from new until we bought it wiht a view to enhancing and imrpoving it for amateur motor sport. Hence, we were looking for a car that had a solid and robust foundation with plenty of scope for improvement.

The ZR Van has just had a full service and MOT, hence even without any work to improve her looks she has the base line potential to offer a good year of straight forward service!

The previous keeper to us had her from new; although the log book shows a change in ownership, but that was because he used the van for his business which changed name! He kept stacks of reciepts and all the old tax discs and althugh he was less that careful when it came to watching the paintwork, he was fastidious about the oily bits!

So the good stuff is as follows:

• A selection of extras including some new stuff to make the engine look smarter as well as new compressor to get the aircon working again. There are extras such as a ZR car cover and some new mud flaps.

The negative stuff:

The black pearlescent paint has been poorly looked after. Not in terms of corrosion but just knocks, dinks and scratches. We had the van professionally surveyed for a quote to account for a respray. The essence though is that the bodywork is honest in terms of no hidden surprises. What you see is a collection of scrapes and bumps that are consistent with the van life. There is a modest amount of corrosion above the rear wheel arches where the inner and outer panels are bonded.

The interior needs a little work around tidying the headlining and replacing some of the basic plastic trim. At some point where someone fixed a bluetooth system they distorted the passenger side plastic pillar plastic cover. The driver seat also has a bit of light damage.

Our dream was to convert this van for rally racing but sadly we need to move house and so this dream is for someone else. One option that we looked at after some ideas from the ZR race community was to look to keep hold of the L series diesel, remap the basic engine management systems, upgrade the turbo to a larger capacity (such as the Garet GT 2056) and improve the exhaust system, and then just play around with lower cost upgrades to improve the handling and breaking. The logic being that some people are getting exceptional performance improvements from these engines in the ZR without having the expense o intimidating engine swaps, and as an aside they still retain great economy, which in a longer race is priceless!!