Chinese Company Intends to Build MG’s in Oklahoma

The New York Times ^ | July 12, 2006 | By NICK BUNKLEY

[aculeus]

DETROIT, July 11 — Can the mystique of a British sports car be recreated by a Chinese company in America’s heartland?

That’s the bet by Nanjing Automobile Group, which plans to resurrect the fabled MG marque in a tricontinental demonstration of how truly global the automotive industry has become.

Nanjing, which purchased the assets of the bankrupt MG Rover Group last year, aims to be the first Chinese carmaker to open a factory in the United States. The company has scheduled a news conference for Wednesday in Oklahoma to announce plans to build a newly designed MG TF Coupe there, starting in 2008. It said the coupe would compete with cars like the Mazda Miata, which sells for $20,000 to $25,000.

It also will assemble a convertible TF Roadster version at MG’s now-shuttered factory in Longbridge, England, and three sedan models in China. American and European operations for MG Motors will be based in Oklahoma City, 90 miles north of the new factory in Ardmore, Okla.

MG’s rebirth under Nanjing, which said it had $2 billion in financing for the endeavor, comes as several Chinese companies are setting their sights on the United States, the world’s largest car market.

Several Chinese carmakers have said they are two to three years away from exporting vehicles to the United States. One, Geely Automobile, displayed a $10,000 sedan at this year’s Detroit auto show, although the car fell short of American safety and emissions standards.

Geely and Chery Automobile, a state-owned company that has sparred with General Motors over the similarity of its name to the Chevy nickname for the Chevrolet brand, plan to sell cars in the United States in 2008. Nanjing, said it intends to build vehicles outside China, where it will face higher labor costs than in its home country.

[2Jedismom]

Oklahoma Ping!

If you want on
or off this list
Freepmail me.

[kallisti]

Maxwell! Is that you?

[JRandomFreeper]

Does it come with a stamped receiver?

/johnny

[E.G.C.]

BTTT

[HuntsvilleTxVeteran]

I owned a Morgan +4, it was based on the Triumph TR2 engine and tranny.
Morgan bought the rights to the BOP aluminum V8, and came out with the Morgan Plus 8.

[RasterMaster]

Who else would Brad (in the pocket of the gambling lobby) Henry court to come to the state but a commie car company.

[Tulsa Ramjet]

"I've got mixed feelings about this but you have admit it will be good for the Oklahoma economy."

What an interesting concept,...A Communist nation, that we have war plans to thwart, who are intolerant of religion, is building cars in the Bible Belt, to make money to fund their war machine that one day we may fight. Wow.

[sagar]

Kinda looks like Audi TT coupe... Walmart edition for everyday folks.

[MJY1288]

I painted a 1965 Morgan a few years back, here is a picture of it

[HuntsvilleTxVeteran]

Beautiful, I always wanted to build the Lotus 7 kit car.
A person in Australia still makes a copy of this kit.

[toddlintown]

A piece of junk when the Brits made it, only beaten by anything from Fiat.

[Ben Hecks]

Two of the numerous British, German, Swedish and Japanese cars in my past were AH Sprites, a 59 Bugeye and a 64 with rollup windows. The 64 had a Delco electric fuel pump which the previous owner had installed in the interests of reliability. Well, you guessed it - on a trip from SC to CA, the Delco pump failed and I replaced it with an original Lucas unit which never gave me any problems.

British cars have received a lot of knocks but they were affordable and could be maintained with regular tools.....it seemed like that I was always buying a special tool to work on the VW that had no use for anything else.

[Lloyd227]

The Chinese will not find success in selling anything (especially cars) directly to the American public until they (as a group) lose the arrogance that blinds them to the idea of actually learning anything from any non-chinese person.

I have a business which deals in automotive electronics, some of it imported, some of it of Chinese origin. But I get almost daily solicitations from Chinese companies courting our business and you should see the way the write, the way they approach business and even their websites. They're insulting, the assume a level of knowledge they've no chance of achieving this decade and they have no clue how their actions are seen by a typical white anglo saxon protestant. The refuse to hire interpreters even while spending serious bucks on websites, newsletters and marketing campaigns that are so full of factual, grammatical and cultural errors that it's just absurd.

There is a core believe in the group of Chinese 'industrialists' that you can just see oozing from the pores. The apparently believe themselves so smart and so good at anything that they'll run through this 2 Billion in financing before they sell the first 10,000 cars.

Look at those photos? What a piece of crap for styling.

The best thing the chinese can do for us is to start dealing MORE directly with the American public instead of just selling their wares through Walmart and other retail outlets they can hide behind.

[tallhappy]

Why would the Chinese government buy a bankrupt British company and then set it up in the United States to make product that hasn't sold and the communist government has never made successsfully?

This will never make money and is being done purely for political and other reasons -- to be able to influence peddle legally semi-legally and illegally.

[MJY1288]

That 65 Morgan had wooden door frames and the trunk area was also framed in wood. The door skins and side panels were aluminum and the fenders were steel, a strange vehicle for sure. It was wrecked in the front and we painted it all over

[1rudeboy]

You are funny. The Chinese haven't even built the plant and you have them employing illegal Mexican labor, your hypothetical "opponents" on this forum defending the practice, and the market cornered on "patriotism." A strawman trifecta.

[tallhappy]

There is a core believe in the group of Chinese 'industrialists' that you can just see oozing from the pores. The apparently believe themselves so smart and so good at anything that they'll run through this 2 Billion in financing before they sell the first 10,000 cars.

This has nothing to do with cars or making money.

[HuntsvilleTxVeteran]

A joke about the Morgan was the suspension was so stiff that you had to provide a passenger with a strip of inner tube to put between their teeth.

[Toddsterpatriot]

We can all go home.

[MJY1288]

LOL, and be on the lookout for Termites