Are two Great British brands in the East about to join forces?
No, not MG and Rover.
There are rumours about of SAIC, owner of MG, and Proton, owner of Lotus since 1996, being in "seesaw-type" negotiations. It's early stages yet and nothing may come of it but even the mighty SAIC needs partners to compete in the international markets and having Proton as a partner does make some sense. For Proton, a new partner is looking essential for survival.
Proton's annual sales are less than 300 thousand per year while SAIC's exceed 1.7 million. Protons business plan is to treble its current sales by the year 2010, however with its current product line and the current economic conditions this is clearly unachievable. It is thought that Proton, being too small to be capable of developing competitive new platforms for itself, is considering using the MG/Roewe platforms and maybe engines for its own vehicles. Obviously talks are centred around Protons mainstream vehicles but could the K-Series engine make a return to the Lotus Elise, maybe in the form of the new 1.5Turbo NSE?
The talks actually started back in the year 2000 when Phoenix Venture Holdings, then owner of MG and Rover, began talks on using the Rover 75 platform in the development of a new Proton Perdana. The talks were shelved in 2005 when MG was bought by Nanjing Automotive but were soon restarted with the new owner of the Rover 75 platform, SAIC. Currently there is no official information on any possible plans, however information from inside Proton indicates that if things work out there is a possibility of an announcement around the time of, or soon after the Shanghai Auto Show.
Reference: http://auto.163.com/09/0223/15/52RMARFC000816HJ.html
