MG's Rob Oldaker wins top award.

MG Sport and Racing MD Rob Oldaker has been awarded the title of "Engineer of the Year" by the prestigious motoring magazine Autocar.

A former racer, an addition to his MG Sport and Racing role, Rob has led the development of many vehicles including: a new range of high performance MG saloons, the Rover 75 Tourer and the MG ZT-T sportswagon. It has been under his guidance that the race prepared MG ZS entered the British Touring Car Championship, taking a win and a pole position in the final meeting of the 2001 season - just the third outing for the team and the MG ZS 259 touring car.

In giving the award to Rob, Autocar stated that they were amazed at the level of progress that has been made in the last 12 months and were looking forward to testing the new product due in 2002.

Having graduated in mechanical engineering, Rob held a number of senior positions in British Leyland, Austin Rover Group and Rover Group. In 1993 he joined Cosworth Engineering and was soon appointed to the positions of managing director and president of Cosworth Intelligent Controls Inc. He then took up a senior appointment at Rolls Royce/Bentley where he was quickly promoted to director of engineering operations. Following the formation of MG Rover Group Ltd in May 2000, Rob accepted the task of heading up the ambitious new product development programme and the company's entrance into motorsport.

Accepting the award on behalf of MG Rover Group Ltd, Rob commented: "This is a tribute to the whole company and in particular to the expertise of the product development area who have engineered such fine cars in a remarkably short space of time."