Rover - any hope?

Hasn't Daewoo always been owned by GM though? I know it now, in fact in Europe they are now sold under the Chevy brand,

The other difference is Kia, Proton etc started with Japeneese technology, I am not sure how easy the 75 will be to manufacture in China, but if SAIC get hold of Rover's plant machinary who knows what will happen.

The SAIC 75 £8995 on the road. I feel very sorry for anybody who has bought a brand new Rover in the last year. I think many people realised the state of Rover though, another explanation for their dramatic reduction in sales in the last year.

 

prediction, rover will fold. market forces

 

You're just 4 days out of date on that prediction. It folded on friday Or at least its insolvant.

 

deawoo was independant when they first started, at the time I think they were the 30th biggest company in the world so they thought they could make a big impact. They bought the rights and tooling of GM for the original cars, its only since the company went very pear-shaped did they need to sell to GM.

If Rover can manufacture a car will dated equipment then the chinese will have no probs. The SAIC factory is already far more advanced than longbridge and if you didnt know different you'd swear it was a japanese line. I noticed last night that they manufacture the last generation Passat for VW, I wondered why there seems to be alot of passats in China and other developing nations.

Its already widely known that SAIC engineers have been over and evaluated the Longbridge plant so they know whats there. They already have the rights to the 25 and 75 so no doubt tooling up wont be an issue.

 

Unfortunatley one of our customers bought ordered a new 25 three weeks ago, he paid cash (6.8K) and thought he got a good deal due to the discount from 9.5K plus leather, climate, blah blah. He picked it up last week, unfortunatley the interior panels show damage, however he's just been told that no warranty work will be carried out coz they wont get paid and are owed substantial warranty costs.

 

I meant the receivers won't be able to strike a deal, and the whole thing will go tits up.

 

The govornment are taking the p*ss they proping it up a cost of £6.3 million a week. If there was no election they would not care at all. 6000 jobs isn't that much when you consider about 100,000+ people will leave university this summer all looking for work.

The money will be much better spent helping the familes in the long term to find new jobs.

Also Rover seemed to have sold of all their assests what is the point on trying to salvage it? They don't even own any car designs anymore as the 45 is a Ronda.

Its a shame because I like the 25 design I think it has flair as is sleek, they are also very comfortable, my uncle has one. The problem is so are most new superminis. The 75 is also very good but again so the Mondeo and thats much cheaper.

 

"There is an obvious solution to MG Rover's problems," writes a reader (of the Biased BBC web site),
"and I am really quite surprised nobody has yet proffered it. It is as follows. In order to ensure that MG Rover remains fully funded in perpetuity, all the government need do is ..."

read entry for Tuesday, April 12, 2005

 

I wouldn't even pay 50p to save Rover, in 2000 I signed a petention to save Rover. I have run out of patience now. The best thing the government can do is spend money on re-educating Rover's workers and give them financial aid while they are looking for jobs.

I feel sorry for the workers but to me its no reason to save a company which is a liability on the UK ecomeny.

Rover is loosing 25 million a month, its the dealers, customers and suppliers who are also loosing this money reducing the groce demostic product.

Rover dealers are now not honouring warranties as Rover already owes them a fortune for warranty work. Rover's reputation and image has gone for ever. I think even MG will have a major problem trying to find enough buyers for the firm to make a profit.

 

Its all over now, SAIC have said they are not interesting in buying it. The workers will be made redudant this weekend.

 

They sold it to the Welsh?

There was a political commentator on Question Time last night who gave Labour a lot of stick over the Rover saga.

She said basically that at the time there were the choice of two consortiums and Labour bottled out and chose the Phoenix one simply because it didn't involve any redundancies.

The other option would have made a high percentage of the workers redundant but on very good packages (much, much better than they will get now - something like £50K pay off instead of £3.5K now) leaving a small competitive company concentrating solely on the MG brand.

Don't know how accurate this is but she seemed pretty convincing to me.

Matt.

 

The problem is though I am not sure how even MG could compete as a sole company. Even Lotus which is a fairly small volume car maker is owned by a much larger company Proton.

All Phoenix have really done is try and extend their live of a dead company. My big question is why didn't Tower's and co cut back on production before this happened? They must have realised that the cars simply were not selling.

 

Because they've got their money.

 

I think its quite disgusting really, propping up a private company with taxpayers money.
It couldn't compete, so its folded. Private company, sad yes, bad for workers, yes, happens to us all.
Face reality.

 

This why the EU dosnt' allow government aids not fair on other companies. Anyway there is no aid so Rover has sunk.

 

This version of this saga is probably the most worrying.
http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=407462005

Quote:
Ministers hid truth on Rover's fall

BRIAN BRADY/WESTMINSTER EDITOR AND TRACEY BOLES


LABOUR covered up the truth about the imminent collapse of car firm MG Rover for months in a desperate attempt to avoid a general election publicity disaster, it has emerged.

Sources close to the Chinese firm SAIC revealed that ministers ignored repeated warnings over the past three months that the company was not interested in going ahead with its "rescue deal" for the stricken firm.

The revelation that ministers "hid their heads in the sand" hoping Rover would limp on beyond May 5 has propelled the government's handling of the company's downfall to the forefront of the election battle.

Last night a Tory spokesman said: "It is now clear that ministers knew this deal was dead a long time ago, but they chose not to tell anyone and not to do anything. You have to wonder whether keeping it alive until the election was over was at the front of their minds."

SAIC told Trade Secretary Patricia Hewitt it was not interested in a joint venture three months ago, a company source has told Scotland on Sunday.

The Shanghai-based company's concerns about Rover's solvency were followed up with three official letters in the past month - on March 29, April 4 and April 5 - stating it was categorically not interested in investing in MG Rover.


And another.
http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=407782005
http://business.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=1036&id=407672005