MG Rover packs it in...

[nopassn]

A sad, sad day....

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...itain_mg_rover

excerpt from the story:

LONDON - MG Rover Group arrived at the end of the road Friday as administrators for the stricken company — Britain's last major car manufacturer — said they intend to break it up, laying off 5,000 workers, after the Shanghai Automotive Industry Corp. made clear it was not interested in a joint venture.

Rover's downfall was precipitated by the failure of talks with China's state-owned SAIC about a joint venture, and renewing the negotiations had been seen as the best chance of saving the company and the jobs of some 6,100 workers at its Longbridge factory in central England.

PricewaterhouseCoopers, which was appointed to oversee the company's future after it closed the plant and filed for a form of bankruptcy a week ago, said there was now no prospect of a sale of the company as a going concern to SAIC or anybody else.

The resulting loss of jobs at Rover, and among 18,000 other workers at companies that supply parts to the automaker, is a development that could not come at a worse time for the British government, just weeks ahead of a general election.

"We'll explore what we would describe as the break-up of the business, we will carry on with the interested parties who want to talk about pieces of the business," said PwC joint administrator Tony Lomas.

Rover had hoped the deal with SAIC would generate cash to allow it to introduce new models and stem the falling sales of its current makes. The company, which turned out 40 percent of the cars bought in Britain in the 1960s, has not produced a new model since 1998 and now holds only a 3 percent share of the market.

But Lomas said that terms of a letter sent to the government, and copied to PwC, from SAIC officials early Friday were "clear and unambiguous."

"The SAIC board had concluded that in its view, MG Rover and (subsidiary) Powertrain Ltd. could not emerge from this process in a state which would justify then investing in it," Lomas said.

[CHEESE-TACULAR]

sucks, but its not like we didnt see this comming

[CdocZ]

Damn........

[:Exige:]

IMO its not a real loss .. it was gonna happen eventually, especially with those Pheonix twats running it. The SVR is still gonna be built because thats built by X power, not MG (a large portion of the SVR is built in Italy).

[Suka]

IMO its not a real loss .. it was gonna happen eventually, especially with those Pheonix twats running it. The SVR is still gonna be built because thats built by X power, not MG (a large portion of the SVR is built in Italy).

I can remember reading an issue of Autocar in which they chase a 360 Modena in an SV all the way back to the Ferrari Factory and park it outside to be cheeky.

[:Exige:]

I can remember reading an issue of Autocar in which they chase a 360 Modena in an SV all the way back to the Ferrari Factory and park it outside to be cheeky.

Yeah, i read that issue too. Was quite funny

[spi-ti-tout]

1/100 cars here are MG Rover....
But I still like them

May we all pray silence to MG Rover

Bye bye!

[UCR]

[Coventrysucks]

Interesting to note that it was the DTI that pushed the Phoenix people into the deal, and the Alchemy group out.

Why did they do this?

Because the Alchemy plan was to stop pretending that MG Rover was a volume car manufacturer and turn it into a low volume sports car company producing 50,000 cars a year. This would have seen the loss of about 3000 jobs BUT they would have gotten a redundancy package worth about £30,000 more than they have ended up with after the current collapse, full pension (due to Phoenix's mis-management of the pension fund there is a hole between £60 - 200 million) and retraining in preparation for employment elsewhere.

However, the government and unions didn't want to loose thousands of jobs, and probably a few thousand from suppliers, and the dealers didn't want to loose 150,000 cars to sell and service; so rather than giving those made redundant a sweet deal, and securing the future of MG Rover they allowed the take over by a bunch of leeches who skimmed anything of value from the company and gave it to themselves.

Everyone agreed at the time that the take over would only sustain MGR's short-mid-term future as a volume manufacturer, any long-term survival would require cooperation with another major manufacturer. This wasn't done. Expect to see SAIC at the fire sale though.

Click ->.gif - ship sinks

[Blitz_]

well well, thier cars suk so im not going to feel sorry, however i am deeply sad for all the workers who will be laid off, damn sad that they lay foundations in a company such as MG/ rover and then get laid off and left unemployed

[ruim20]

I heard the english goverment is giving it a real try to save rover.. i hope it does! It's very sad when a car company dies, for those who work there and for car lovers!

[Coventrysucks]

I heard the english goverment is giving it a real try to save rover.. i hope it does!

Oh no they aren't.

I bet they aren't to pleased that it is 18 days to the election though.

They paid £6 million of public money to cover a week's wages, but they cannot legaly bail the company out. Otherwise they'd have to bail out every other company that went bust.

They did try to get the Chinese to take over - but why bother? They've already got the rights to the 25, 75 and the engines. Anything else they want they can get on the cheap now that MGR has gone under. I suppose that they could have gotten a foothold in Europe, but I'm sure they'll find another way.

They have announced that a full investigation will be made into what went on with Phoenix.

The horse is long gone though, no use trying to bolt the door now.

[ruim20]

That's it then, i think they should have made a bigger effort in motorsport, le mans and lms specially, i really liked when the MG kept on the Audi tale couple of years ago in Lemans.

[my porsche]

so very sad...

[taz_rocks_miami]

I heard the bad news this morning as I was watching the financial news on CNN and then on BBC World. That's what mismanagement will do to a company. Rover should have started looking for capital a while back. This is one of those "too little, too late" situations. I feel bad for all those that have lost their jobs directly and indirectly