Following weeks of talks between Rover bosses, its owners BMW, and union leaders, the proposed agreement will this week be put to a ballot of all 39,000 workers.

The package has been outlined at a series of meetings, including a mass gathering at Birmingham's National Exhibition Centre of 7,000 Rover workers based in the West Midlands.

Workers at the car-maker's Cowley and Swindon plants will hold meetings on Monday and balloting will be held all week, with the result scheduled for Friday.

Union leaders expect the workers to overwhelmingly endorse the deal, triggering up to £2bn of investment in new models and machinery.

Subsidies sought

Walter Hasselkus admitted he had "got it wrong"

BMW is expected to seek subsidies of around £200m from the government to help with the cost of modernising plants such as Longbridge in Birmingham.

The announcement last week that Rover would seek the radical restructuring deal with the unions to save Longbridge was accompanied by the resignation of the company's chairman Walter Hasselkus.

He admitted that the company under his stewardship had "got it wrong".

Rover is not the only car manufacturer to have been forced to address a change in its fortunes.

Ford has recently announced a series of cutbacks in production - triggered, it said, by a continuation of the "softening" of exports.