Longbridge is back in business

Inside revamped Longbridge plant

Rob Pittam
BBC News, Longbridge

The assembly lines and vast factory spaces of Longbridge have lain idle for three years since the collapse of Rover.

But slowly, life is coming back to this famous old factory.

On a production line in the main building , a new version of the old Rover MG TF is being put together.

At the moment, work here is a shadow of the former glories of Longbridge.

When Rover came to an end in 2005 more than 6,500 people worked on the site, now there are just 180.

And a factory with the capacity to build almost 2,000 cars a week, is turning out just 48.

Along the production line a handful of workers gathers around a handful of bright shiny new cars, but stretching behind them, the huge space of an empty car factory.

Sheet lighting seems to emphasise the distances as it bounces off concrete floors and lights up girders and stairways stretching away into the distance.

And this is just one of 15 buildings on a 100 acre site.

But the new Chinese owners insist if all goes well, Longbridge will soon be making thousands of cars once again.

Deep pockets

So how can they succeed at a factory where so many other ventures have failed?

The Chinese say the answer is determination and deep resources.

Nanjing Automotive which bought Rover has merged with its Chinese rival Shanghai Automotive to create a giant car company.

Worth more than £20bn and making more than two million cars a year, it has deep financial pockets.

It sees Longbridge as a key factor in its plans to break into the European car market.

The company has already sunk £50m into the site. Small change for a giant corporation.

It's selling the new MG for £16,400 - the equivalent model in Rover days would have cost around £24,000.

The Chinese deny that they are selling the car at a loss, but admit it's a competitive price and one deliberately aimed at winning a foothold in the competitive car market.

Best of British

The body shells for the new sports car are made in China and shipped out for assembly in Britain.

But on the production line itself things look little different from any other car factory, with a team of fitters working on building up the car.

The new owners say it's a British car, designed by its British team of designers in Warwickshire and built by British workers but with foreign owners - a familiar enough story in the car industry.

Just 500 of this new high-spec MG are being built, but already more than four hundred have been sold.

When this production run comes to an end the factory will move onto producing a standard specification MG .

Beyond that there are plans for a whole family of other models for Longbridge.

The company is coy about saying what that means for employment, but says it aims to be producing up to forty thousand cars a year within the next three years.

There's little doubt that if that succeeded it would bring hundreds of new jobs.

But in such a competitive industry, with many European economies struggling and on a site that's faced so many problems in the past, turning Longbridge into a giant car maker once more will be no easy task.

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