New MG rolls out of Longbridge factory

The first all-new MG in 16 years rolled off the production line at Longbridge in Birmingham today - with the factory's only female production line worker behind the wheel.

Today marked the official first day of production for the MG6, a five door family hatchback which will be competing against the likes of the VW Golf and Ford Focus.

Lisa Ponter, aged 44 and from Stourbridge, is the only woman assembly worker at the plant — and confessed to being "ex-tremely nervous" as she drove the car while scores of media, MG dealers and fellow workers looked on.

Lisa started work at Longbridge in 1987, initially as a sewing machinist, and was one of the 6,000 laid off in 2005 when the plant closed in the MG Rover collapse. But when recruiting started again under the firm's new Chinese owners, she applied to rejoin her old place of work and was taken on.

Lisa, of Greenbank Gardens, Wordsley, said she loved the new car.

"Everyone is very excited here. I think it's a lovely, sexy, car," she said. Fellow worker Stuart Cooper, 46, of Woodridge Road, Halesowen, said: "Everybody was devastated when it closed but you've just got to get on with it. I was one of the lucky ones because I wasn't out of work for long."