Corporate Business

It may be owned by China’s Shanghai Automotive Industries Corporation, but MG Motor still has British blood running through it. The proof: The company is getting a new design studio at its factory here. The new studio will serve the 200-strong design and engineering staff of the company for the MG and Roewe brands, both of which are owned by SAIC, China’s largest car producer. Roewe is the relabeled Rover, since Land Rover retained the rights to the Rover nameplate. The studio will be the lead engineering center for SAIC’s own-brand products worldwide and for all MG and Roewe products. The team has already contributed substantially to the development of the Ford Focus-sized Roewe 550 and is creating an MG version of the same car. Roewe already sits atop the J.D. Power China Sales Satisfaction Index, which has been in […]

For you are looking for an auto insurance quote, you should check as many resources as possible – both on and offline. There are some great sites on the web that offer helpful tips and advice about auto insurance as well as free online auto insurance quotes. In addition to the auto insurance rates though, you should be checking the coverage, the terms, and also looking into what kind of service you are going to get after the sale. A few of the things you need to consider include: Where do you take your car if it is damaged. How quickly will the insurance company pay for the claim. What kind of experience have existing and past customers have with the claims adjuster? Does the automobile insurance provider require full payment up front, or do they have monthly terms? All […]

Former Longbridge worker Tony Dudley has laid solid new foundations for his garage business – by building an MOT bay himself. The former MG Rover panel beater spent five days helping lay down a total of 27 tons of concrete to mark the latest key milestone in the history of Northfield-based MGR Services. And Northfield Labour MP Richard Burden drove along his prized MGZT as the first car to undergo an MOT at the popular garage, less than a mile from the former home of MG Rover.

This isn’t exactly British car news, but Swedish car maker Volvo is heading into Chinese hands, after owner Ford announced that Geely is in pole position to buy the struggling manufacturer. Following in the footsteps of MG Rover’s sale to Shanghai Automotive and Nanjing Automobile, the potential deal marks the latest move by a fast-expanding Chinese car maker to boost its presence in Europe. Negotiations have been ongoing for some time, and it is understood Ford was only willing to enter into discussions once it had evaluated the firm’s Chinese operations. Now the green light has been given, the future of Volvo and the launch of promising upcoming models such as the S60 should be secure. The move will also benefit Geely. Volvo’s research and development expertise and engineering skills will be a huge bonus, as its main interests are […]

Chinese-owned MG Motor U.K., the British sports-car marque, is to halt production of its TF sports car for six months, not resuming until March next year. Sales of the low-volume sports car, the only vehicle now built at the once-massive Longbridge factory in England, have been slow through the year. The midengine two-seat TF sports car started life as the MGF in 1995 and was Britain’s best-selling sports car for years. It’s now sold in limited numbers in the U.K. Just 265 were sold in the first nine months of this year, although September was the revived brand’s best month yet, with 65 TFs finding buyers. The company also has orders for all 50 copies of a new 85th-anniversary limited edition. According to newly appointed sales and marketing director Guy Jones, the small-sports-car market is down 30 percent this year […]

Jones will take responsibility for UK sales, marketing, PR and aftersales, as well as the development of the MG brand. He has previously worked as brand manager at Bentley and marketing director at Kia UK. ‘MG is a much loved iconic British brand that now has SAIC as a proud new owner, capable of developing the brand on a global basis,’ said Jones. ‘SAIC are already playing a leading role in China, now the world’s largest car market, and have ambitious global plans for the MG brand.’ MG is now owned by Chinese firm SAIC, and re-commenced production at Birmingham’s Longbridge plant last year. It launched its first advertising since the 2005 break-up of MG Rover last autumn, focusing on its TF LE500 model.

West Midlands car industry activists are poring over the fine detail of the government report into the collapse of MG Rover to establish whether there are grounds to bring a civil action against the so-called Phoenix Four, the executives who bought the car company from BMW for £10 in May 2000. MG Rover watchers are said to be angry at the extent to which the Phoenix Four benefited personally while overseeing the demise of Britain’s last volume car manufacturer. They believe the report, compiled after a four-year investigation by two government inspectors, has opened the door to civil action. “Company law on fiduciary responsibility is complex and unclear,” said Nick Matthews, an academic at Coventry University and car industry analyst for 15 years. “The inspectors agree that it is uncertain, particularly in respect of the deal to buy MGR Capital. […]

There is a very nice and concise history of Rover cars over at The Telegraph. I am not going to reprint it here, but do take a look at the article for a trip down memory lane.

Seen from Longbridge, MG Rover’s former base, the business’s industrial legacy five years on looks decidedly threadbare. In one portion of the cavernous and almost deserted plant – once one of Europe’s largest – China’s Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation, owner of the rump MG brand, began making its TF two-seater sports car last year in small numbers for the UK and Ireland, using Chinese and European parts. The company will not comment on production volumes, but acknowledges they are modest. “It’s not MG Rover numbers – it’s a single model we’re producing,” says Peter Brooking, marketing manager for MG Motor UK. Most MG cars are now made in China. In 2006, a year after buying rights to the brand from MG Rover’s liquidators, Nanjing Automobile Corporation moved an entire production line from Birmingham halfway across the world in 4,900 shipping […]

Former MG Rover workers living in Bromsgrove could be in line for cash left on the books of a car-leasing business linked to the collapsed company. According to the Daily Telegraph, Business Secretary Peter Mandelson is being urged to take control of a £22m dowry left on the books of the defunct MG Rover business, and distribute it among thousands of former car workers. The paper reported, on August 30, that the cash had come from a car-leasing business linked to the collapsed company called MGR Capital, which was co-owned by state-controlled bank HBOS and some of the original MG Rover directors. MGR Capital was wound up last year, with £22m in cash remaining on its books. The Telegraph said it had been expected that the money be divided between former shareholders, HBOS and two former MG Rover directors, Peter […]

MG-Roewe’s parent company, SAIC, are very eager to build their own SUV based on Sssangyong IPR but a launch date of the Ssangyong-Roewe has never been announced despite it being spotted dozens of times out testing. It could be that the rights to Ssangyong IPR is in a murky place right now straight after Ssangyongs bankruptcy which saw them kick SAIC out of the boardroom and straight out of Ssangyong affairs, the Roewe SUV was expected to be launched in the first three months of 2009. The same could be said for the Roewe 95, it was largely understood that SAIC would have been excited to show off their luxury Roewe 95 limo model at the last Shanghai Auto Show, but as that is based off the Ssangyong Chairman it seems that that might have been temporarily delayed as well. […]

History repeats itself first as tragedy, then as farce … then as the Mini. An announcement that two new versions of Britain’s most successful car will soon be produced at BMW’s Cowley plant offers coruscating insights into national identity, consumer psychology and the realities of design today. It was on August 26, 1959, when ice-cream colored Ford Zodiacs with fluted chrome still wafted along dual-carriageways, that the Mini 1.0 appeared. As a small boy my father took me to see one of the first at the Rocket Garage in Liverpool. What was obvious even — perhaps specially — to a child was ingenuity of a high order. Alec Issigonis’s insistence on compactness and his refusal of “style” produced the most unusual and influential car ever. But Issigonis had a demanding personality: he insisted, for example, that discomfort kept drivers helpfully […]

The Telegraph reports that the report into the demise of MG Rover will highlight “questionable” business practices by the Phoenix Four but contains no “smoking gun” on the conduct of the Government. The report will be published this Friday after the Serious Fraud Office decided not to pursue a fraud investigation into the demise of the Midlands car maker in 2005. According to sources who have seen the document, it makes uncomfortable reading for the Government – especially over what happened to a £100m bridging loan designed to rescue MG Rover – but suggests that Labour did try to save the car maker and there was no deliberate plan to pull the plug on the business. The report, which has cost the taxpayer £16m and has taken four years to compile, contains numerous details of complex financial transactions. However, the […]

In Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale, the ugly duckling grows into a swan. Upper-crust British auto manufacturer Aston Martin may reverse the process, morphing its handsome sports cars into the Cygnet microcar. Cygnet is a collaboration with Toyota, which will sell Aston Martin 2,000 of its iQ mini-commuters to be adapted, with a target sale date of 2010 in Europe. Aston Martin, best known for its dashing James Bond DB series of 150 m.p.h. sports cars, has grafted its signature grille onto the iQ microbox. This makes the mini-Martin concept look like a fugitive from “Who Framed Roger Rabbit.” The bold Aston Martin “face” is disproportionately narrow and tall; think a Rolls-Royce golf cart. The iQ is only 117 inches long (that’s less than 10 feet) and 59 inches high, but it seats four. It’s powered by a 998-cc 3-cylinder […]

Never text while driving. Call with caution while driving. But there’s one phone application made specifically for use on the road — GPS navigation. Already, several car nav programs for mobiles are available, but today the most highly anticipated of them arrived: the TomTom app for iPhone, which was announced in June. The app was designed to closely emulate GPS navigation units for cars, and indeed it has turn-by-turn directions, voice instructions, touch-screen commands, a choice of 2D or 3D mapping, day/night screen choices and coverage of the U.S. and Canada. The price is not cheap — $99.99 — but that’s less than the cost of the vast majority of dedicated car navigation units. Of course, the iPhone screen is smaller than the ones on most car units. The tech blog will have a full review of the app, upcoming, […]

Niche sportscar manufacturer Lotus has scooped a ‘best driver’s car’ accolade for its Evora model. The award, from Autocar magazine, followed assessment on road and track around the South Downs and the Goodwood race circuit. Lotus beat off competition from Aston Martin, Nissan, Porsche, Audi, Lamborghini and Jaguar. The mid-engined 2+2 Lotus Evora combines a super stiff extruded and bonded aluminium chassis with vehicle dynamics knowledge employed to tune its race-car derived double wishbone suspension. Roger Becker, vehicle engineering director for Lotus, said: “The dynamic ability and driving experience of the Evora were the foundation of the engineering process and we are delighted that Autocar has recognised this by giving the Evora this accolade. The Evora offers the great Lotus driving experience in a very comfortable, practical, refined and efficient package, and with only 205 g/km of CO2 it shows […]

U.K. manufacturing unexpectedly jumped in June by the most in 1 1/2 years as factories raised production of cars and computers, evidence the recession is easing. Output rose 0.4 percent from the previous month, the Office for National Statistics said today in London. Economists predicted a 0.1 percent drop, according to the median of 25 forecasts in a Bloomberg News survey. Factory production is down 11.7 percent from a year ago.

Five of the top six reliable cars are Japanese… but the good news is that three of them are made in Britain. Honda, which has a plant in Swindon, Wilts, is first in the list of smooth-runners. Third is Derby-based Toyota and Nissan, with a factory in Sunderland, is sixth, says new research. Honda-buyers can drive smugly knowing there is only a 10% chance of a breakdown when the car is between three and six years old. Other Far Eastern companies Mazda, Subaru and Mitsubishi are also high in the Manufacturer Reliability Index top ten. At the wrong end of the table is Land Rover, with a 47% chance of a breakdown, with Renault and Saab queuing up just behind on the hard shoulder. The index, compiled by insurers Warranty Direct, gauges the most dependable used cars among 250 popular […]