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NAC set to drive in MG Rover
BY OUR AUTOMOBILES CORRESPONDENT
March 31, 2007: The cute little
sports car is all set to come back.
The Nanjing Automobile Group Corp (NAC)
of China is beginning manufacture of
the car yet again. The sportscar,
retaining the name MG Rover, will roll
out of the Nanjing plant.
A report said that NAC's new plant in
Pukou area of Nanjing has the capacity
to roll out of its assembly line as
many as 200,000 MG Rovers a year. The
company plans to pump in around $450
million over the next five years. NAC
had bought the failed British carmaker
MG Rover in July 2005 for $97 million.
In the process it had outbid the
biggest Chinese carmaker listed in
Shanghai, the Shanghai Automobile
Industry Corp.
The future plans are big, at the
moment. It has been reported that NAC
will first make the MG7, a mid-scale
sedan, and the MG TF sports car, which
the company claims will be the first
real sports car to be manufactured in
China.
So with the arrival of the new MGs,
China's automobile market, which is
currently dominated by German and
Japanese giants, will mark the entry
of an English breed. The MG Rover is
expected to charm the Chinese neo-rich
.
Reports said that the acquisition of
the UK’s MG Rover Group has put NAC on
a win-all position. MG Rover is still
believed to have the most advanced
technologies especially after BMW took
it over and upgraded it in the middle
1990s.
Meanwhile, NAC's Birmingham plant will
resume production of MG-TF sports cars
next month, said another report. With
annual production at the plant set to
reach 50,000 units, the company is
considering using the Birmingham plant
as the assembly base for exports to
elsewhere in Europe too. It also has
plans to build an automobile research
and development industrial park in
England.
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