MG Sport & Racing, the specialist cars division of MG Rover and separately owned by the Phoenix Four until it went into administration last May, appears to have been trading healthily since its parent’s collapse.
A report seen recently by Autocar suggests that since Phoenix lost control, the company has sold cars — mostly MG SVs — and components worth £520,000. And despite the fact that the administrators appear to have met unpaid bills worth around £650,000 since May, the division has apparently ended its troubled year with modest earnings of £118,000.
MG Sport & Racing has modern premises just outside the MG Rover compound at Longbridge, and remains in administration because it was not included in Nanjing Automotive’s recent purchase of the main MGR business from the administrators.
Nanjing, which recently announced that it has begun to entertain approaches from British suitors other than its former favourite, GB Sports Cars, is believed to be determined to find a partner who can re-start Longbridge production of the MG ZT saloon as well as the MG TF. GB Sports is understood to be keen on solely making the TF, and to have negotiated supplies of suitable engines (believed to be Audi units) that comply with the Euro 4 emissions standards introduced at the end of this year.
Rover’s light but venerable K-series, whose manufacturing plant and design rights are in the process of being transported to a new Nanjing plant in China, complies only with outgoing Euro 3 standards.
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