"MGs HAVE gone on sale in Birmingham for the first time" - Birmingham Post

MGs HAVE gone on sale in Birmingham for the first time.

The iconic British sportscar is now being sold at a new sales centre on the Longbridge site where the cars are built.

The new on-site dealership opened yesterday and was packed with enthusiastic potential buyers.

Doug Wallace, the company’s press and events manager, said: “Customers who come here will be able to buy their cars in a showroom which looks out on to the design centre and the engineering centre which has helped produce their cars.”

The company currently has 40 dealerships across the country and is hoping to increase that number to between 55 to 65 by the end of the year.

The Longbridge dealership is a case of history repeating itself as there was a showroom there for a time when the site was occupied by MG Rover.

One visitor to the new dealership was Longbridge Labour councillor Andy Cartwright, a former Rover worker who was back on site for the first time since losing his job.

“I’m proud of what MG is trying to achieve here. They have put car making back into Birmingham and now it needs the people of this city to get behind them and buy the cars. I have had a test drive in one of the new cars and it’s superb.

“This is a business which is trying hard. The technology is first class and as Birmingham people we should be proud.”

The opening of the showroom was marked with a Macmillan Coffee Morning and to coincide with the final stages of ‘The Great British Charity Test Drive’.

The test drive saw fleets of the latest MG cars touring the country to raise cash for Macmillan Cancer Support and Help for Heroes.

SIX years after the collapse of Britain’s last major car manufacturer a brand new MG dealership is to open – meaning buyers can finally purchase the car in the city in which they are famously built.

MG Motor UK is to open a sales centre at its Longbridge plant in Birmingham enabling people to view test drive and buy the company’s two brand new cars, the MG6 GT fastback and MG6 Magnette sports saloon.

The opening will mark a homecoming on the dealer front for the company, which began manufacturing in Longbridge again, after a six year break in April this year.

Up until now prospective customers had to travel as far as Dudley to buy one of the new MG vehicles.

MG is the last surviving part of the MG Rover Group, which collapsed in 2005 at a cost of more than 6,000 jobs.

The Longbridge plant, once the largest car plant in the world with more than 250,000 people working there in the 1960s, has now been almost completely demolished, with large parts of it redeveloped.

The major decline of the MG Rover group came after former German owners BMW sold the company to four businessmen, known as the Phoenix Consortium, for a nominal GBP10.

However the saviours failed to deliver promised new models and Rover fell well behind their European competitors before collapsing entirely.

The four members of the Phoenix consortium have been heavily criticised by former employees and government ministers including Kenneth Clark for taking more than GBP42million between them from the dying company in pay and pensions benefits.

In May 2010 the four members of the Phoenix consortium Peter Beale, Nick Stephenson, John Edwards and John Towers voluntarily agreed to be banned from being directors of a company for between three and six years.

And around the same time, under the ownership of the Chinese Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation (SAIC) MG began selling cars again, employing around 300 people at the Longbridge plant with a view to eventually employing around 1,000.

The arrival of the MG 6, based on the Chinese Roewe 550 will see the Longbridge plant roll out 2,000-3,000 cars a year.

MG employees and their families will take part in an afternoon of activities to celebrate the opening of the dealership.

The fun continues throughout the weekend when the new MG sales centre will be open to the public.

Clint Cordle, MG Motor UK’s marketing manager, said: “We’re planning a fun, family event to mark what it an important development in the new MG story.

“The brand is about fun and this will be a great way to celebrate.”

Roverman wrote:NAC TF production forgotten about?

SIX years after the collapse of Britain’s last major car manufacturer a brand new MG dealership is to open – meaning buyers can finally purchase the car in the city in which they are famously built.

ZTsteve wrote:What a shame the FinancialNews article had to reiterate the criticism of the P4.

Even if it's all true, it's got nothing to do with the good news they were meant to be reporting.