But the best thing............. about this car, owned for the last seven years 
by MG CENTRE Centre’s Graham Pearce and now fully sorted, is its engine.

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 Creamy-smooth at ordinary road speeds, it will rev to 5500rpm, even 6000 with impunity – although there’s not much point going this far, you’re better off changing up and letting the torque do the work – where the stock engine is so painful after 3500rpm that there’s no need for a rev limiter; restraint is aural. Either engine will pull, on the flat, from just 1000rpm in overdrive top.

Pearce’s car has a deep-chested rumble almost imperceptible from the start point of 24.1mph, but drawing ever closer as the C gets into its stride and begins to reel in the horizon at an elastically-quickening rate.

On twisty rural roads you eventually bottle out, unsure of the standard brakes, although it seems a shame to cut short this C’s most outstanding talent. Yet those brakes inspire confidence through their feel, if not their odour. Whatever the smell of gently scorched friction material might have suggested, they didn’t fade.

There are two schools of thought about bringing a C into line for the ‘90s, but they both agree that, as a minimum, you need decent modern rubber – the Fulda 2000, conveniently available in a 185/70x15 for the ‘80s generation of Saabs, is a popular choice.

One faction says you use a MGB rack, which is half a turn quicker, and a remapped distributor to make the engine rev. The other says you sort out the motor with manifolding and balancing, and the directional changes with stiffer springs and anti-roll bars.
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