The Guardian Sales are falling but politicians are unlikely to let the car maker fail now Rover, the troubled British car company that has plagued politicians, industrialists and financiers for 35 years, could be heading for the rocks in the run-up to a general election next year, senior industry insiders warned yesterday. “I’m sure the [...]

Sales of MG Rover’s products have fallen sharply Car manufacturer MG Rover is stopping production for Christmas three days earlier than planned for stock taking, following a slump in sales. The assembly lines at its Longbridge plant, West Midlands, will stop on Tuesday, instead of the weekend. MG Rover’s sales fell by almost a third [...]

Car maker MG Rover is suspending production for the rest of the week to help clear stocks of unsold cars. The Midlands manufacturer is to shut down work on three models on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday this week. Those cars affected are the Rover 25, 45 and 75. Last month, the firm said it hoped [...]

Union leaders are to meet the Birmingham-based car group MG Rover after it was announced that a £12.9m trust has been set up for senior executives. The meeting, which was arranged before details of the fund were made public, will take place next week. The trust is designed to cover post-retirement benefits for the company’s [...]

Tata Motors, the Indian firm that is building MG Rover’s next car for the UK market, has been showing off the City Rover, which is due to go on sale in November. Tata, a former truck maker that expanded into consumer automobiles in the 1990s, is making the City Rover at its plant in Pune, [...]

The new City Rover will cost about £6,000 MG Rover is unveiling its new small car at its Longbridge factory in Birmingham. The car will be built in partnership with the Indian company Tata and manufactured at its plant in Pune in India. Rover plans to import about 50,000 of the cars a year and [...]

A union leader said MG Rover misjudged the mood of workers at its Longbridge factory in Birmingham after they voted to call off a planned strike. Just over half of the 3,000 car workers have agreed to a new two-year deal which restores sick pay to its full amount and includes another half a per [...]

MG Rover is considering a £300m deal to buy a Polish car factory. The Polish authorities have agreed to allow the Birmingham-based company to invest the cash in a former Daewoo plant near Warsaw. The opportunity arose after the South Korean car firm went into administration last year, owing millions of pounds around the world, [...]

The new MG Rover model will be built at a factory in India, the Birmingham-based company has announced. The small car, which has not yet been named, will be built by Tata Engineering at its factory in Pune. But it will be based on Rover’s design and engineering standards. The new model, which will be [...]

The Chinese authorities have issued an arrest warrant for Yang Rong, the missing former chairman of Brilliance, the country’s biggest manufacturer of commercial vans. Police from the north eastern province of Liaoning said they were seeking 46-year-old tycoon Yang Rong in connection with alleged economic crimes. The news is causing anxiety in Germany, where BMW [...]

MG Rover Group has launched a high performance sports car that it hopes will rival the likes of Porsche, Maserati and Jaguar. The MG XPower SV is “an extremely powerful car”, said MG Rover chief executive, Kevin Howe. And not only in terms of horsepower. “The car illustrates how far we are prepared to extend [...]

Rover’s Longbridge plant: Edging towards profitability? Car maker MG Rover has said it will not break-even this year after all. The company has blamed lower sales caused by the strength of the pound compared to the euro. Phoenix Venture Holdings, which bought Rover from BMW two years ago, has revealed that it has cut losses [...]

British carmaker MG Rover has announced plans to take over a car factory in Poland as part of its effort to assemble and sell more cars in Eastern Europe. “We think production could begin within 6 to 12 months,” said MG Rover’s public relations director, Steve McKee. Talks are ongoing about production of MG Rover [...]

MG Rover and the Chinese automotive group, China Brilliance, have signed a deal to create a new company building small and medium-sized cars. The venture will safeguard thousands of jobs in the UK both at MG Rover’s Longbridge factory in Birmingham and among component suppliers. Kevin Howe, MG Rover’s chief executive, said the link represented [...]

The two top dogs at the UK car maker MG Rover – chief executive Kevin Howe and chairman John Towers – both failed to turn up at the company’s press conference ahead of the 72nd International Motor Show in Geneva on Tuesday. Their conspicuous absence was believed to be due to ongoing talks about a [...]

The Indian car maker, Tata, has plans to launch its small Indica car on to the British market. A spokesman for the company said it hoped to reverse a slump in profit levels since the car’s domestic launch in 1998. Tata said it aims to export up to 12,000 cars to Britain each year. Tata [...]

The first major revamp of the MG sports car since 1995 is being unveiled at the Brussels motor show. Manufactured at Rover’s giant Longbridge plant in Birmingham, the new car is called the MGTF. With the top rated model – the 1.8 litre TF160 – capable of 140mph, the company hopes to consolidate the marque’s [...]

Trade unions have welcomed plans by MG Rover to forge a partnership with a large Chinese firm to produce a new range of vehicles. The Birmingham-based company plans to create a coalition with China Brilliance Holdings, China’s largest producer of minibuses. The move could result in the two companies jointly developing and manufacturing new products [...]

Land Rover are unveiling the company’s third all-new Range Rover in 31 years with a launch at the Design Museum in London. Industry analysts will be keen to see if the vehicle can retain and improve market share in the face of stiff competition from Mercedes, BMW and Lexus. The Range Rover, to be revealed [...]

A new luxury sports car is to be built in Birmingham instead of Italy. MG Rover confirmed on Sunday that it will build up to 2,000 MG X80s a year at Longbridge instead of Qvale Modena in Italy. Unions have welcomed the move and say it will give added confidence to the local economy. The [...]