Promise of new life at Longbridge
The Chinese owners of MG have set out their clear ambitions to bring car manufacturing back to Longbridge.
The Chinese owners of MG have set out their clear ambitions to bring car manufacturing back to Longbridge.
Five years after the collapse of MG Rover, SAIC, the Chinese car maker that now owns MG, is investing £5 million in a design and technical centre at the former Birmingham factory site.
Nearly 300 designers and engineers are turning out new engines, car bodies, gearboxes - even new seats - as the firm gears up to present the world with a complete family of MG cars over the next few years.
One of the first designs off the drawing board has been the MG6 family car, launched in China late last year. Later this year it will start rolling off the production line at Longbridge - now renamed MG Birmingham.
And it will be followed in early 2011 by a saloon car version designed purely for the European market.
MG Motors' marketing director Guy Jones said this would be no "screwdriver" job, simply bolting together components shipped to Birmingham from China. Instead it will involve detailed assembly, including significant electrical and wiring work to ensure the new cars comply with European safety regulations.
No-one is talking about job numbers yet, however, to avoid raising expectations. Despite high hopes, in five years the only cars off the production line under previous owner Nanjing, at the Birmingham site have been a few hundred updated MG TF roadsters.
But the SAIC operation promises to be in a different league. The 300 or so engineers and designers at Birmingham are working hand in glove with more than 1,500 colleagues at centres in China, but "we take the lead," says MG design director Tony Williams-Kenny.
The team at the SAIC UK Technical Centre are responsible for the design and engineering of all the MG-badged cars, as well as significant input into the Roewe models made for the domestic Chinese market.
Their first car for the Chinese was the Roewe 550, which is set to be the basis for a new medium-sized MG.
At Birmingham the designers draw up their concept sketches, turn them into 3-D computer graphics - using the same technology that created the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park - before creating detailed clay models and full scale mock-ups. Production work is done in Shanghai and Nanjing.
The 550 has gone on to be the biggest selling "own-brand" car in the Chinese market.
Most recently his team hit the headlines at the Beijing Motor Show with its Mini-sized MG Zero concept car and it is clear a full-scale production version of the Zero is not far away.
The Technical Centre itself is an impressive hi-tech open-plan office housing 210 engineers. But it is only part of SAIC's plans for Longbridge. David Lindley, president of the UK SAIC operation, said: "The company's ambition is to get car manufacturing back here again. But to do that we have to re-establish the brand, and make sure we can sell enough cars to sustain it."
