RV8 rear lamp sells for £475 on eBay! Ian Quarrington has been following the bidding on eBay for an RV8 rear lamp unit and saw that over the 7 days of bidding the unit finally sold for £475. What are the prospects for a new supply of RV8 lamps? Clive Wheatley mgv8parts is working on sourcing a new supply of RV8 rear lamps but the tooling for the new lenses and the complicated backing of the unit will require a serious investment. Clive is working with a local specialist but it's not a straighforward rear lamp unit like the item seen on MGBGTV8s and MGBs. During his researches Clive found from contact with the original manufacturer of the RV8 rear lamp units for MG Rover that following the demise of MG Rover all the tooling for the lamp units was binned. He also heard that the original tooling cost MG Rover over £280,000 back in the early 1990s but Clive is working with a local specialist and the progress with the lenses has gone well but now they are working on the complicated backing to the unit with the mountings and lamp fittings. But it is a project Clive wants to be a success and the good news is the manager of the specialist company also has an RV8 of his own! Posted: 190920 The online auction of a rare RV8 rear lamp unit on eBay began on Tuesday 10th September 2019 at 9.00am with a starting price of £40 and with 50 bids from 4 bidders ended with a final bid of £475 on at 9.00am on Tuesday 17th September. For many RV8 enthusiasts this will be surprising news but for members who have been actively searching for a replacement RV8 rear lamp they will be only too aware that they have become as rare as hens' teeth! How did the bidding go? Our chart reproduces the bidding history from the eBay website and shows consistent bidding by "Bidder 180" (in red above) and the late arrival of the successful "Bidder 11" (in blue above) who finally outbid Bidder 180. Chart What are the prospects for a new supply of RV8 lamps? In our V8 Newsletter for August 2019 in Safety Fast! we reported "a supply of new RV8 rear lamp units is being obtained by Clive Wheatley". See alongside for an update on that resourcing project. Photos of the lamp