JustBritish

West Midlands car industry activists are poring over the fine detail of the government report into the collapse of MG Rover to establish whether there are grounds to bring a civil action against the so-called Phoenix Four, the executives who bought the car company from BMW for £10 in May 2000.

MG Rover watchers are said to be angry at the extent to which the Phoenix Four benefited personally while overseeing the demise of Britain’s last volume car manufacturer. They believe the report, compiled after a four-year investigation by two government inspectors, has opened the door to civil action.

“Company law on fiduciary responsibility is complex and unclear,” said Nick Matthews, an academic at Coventry University and car industry analyst for 15 years. “The inspectors agree that it is uncertain, particularly in respect of the deal to buy MGR Capital. What they have said is that the only way to establish for sure whether laws have been broken is through the courts.”

The inspectors devoted 100 pages of their 850-page report to the Phoenix Four’s investment in MGR Capital. This was the car finance joint venture with a subsidiary of the banking group HBOS, now part of Lloyds TSB, that bought the Rover cars finance and lease loan book from BMW for £313m in 2001.

However, the interest in MGR Capital was acquired independently of Phoenix Venture Holdings, the businessmen’s master company, which owned MG Rover. Their involvement in MGR came through the Phoenix Partnership, a private vehicle for the four and Kevin Howe, the man they brought in to run the car company.

The inspectors drew attention to the complex boardroom paperwork that accompanied the transaction and pointed out that company law is uncertain. “The points should rather, it seems to us, be aired if and so far as necessary in court proceedings with full legal argument,” they said.

Union leaders said it was not clear if they would lead a civil action, admitting there was unlikely to be much appetite – or funding – for ex-workers to bring a case themselves.

Richard Burden, Labour MP for Birmingham Northfield, said that it was “unacceptable” if , as the report claimed, the Phoenix Four had misled him and his constituents.

“The report makes the charge that when I and others raised questions about the structure of the company and the remuneration of the directors, at least some of the responses we received were misleading. If true, this is very serious. Not only will they have misled me as the local MP, they will also have misled my constituents and their own employees. That is unacceptable.

“The report also alleges that one of the Phoenix Four gave misleading answers to a committee of the House of Commons of which I was a member. If this is true, the directors must answer to that.”

History repeats itself first as tragedy, then as farce … then as the Mini. An announcement that two new versions of Britain’s most successful car will soon be produced at BMW’s Cowley plant offers coruscating insights into national identity, consumer psychology and the realities of design today.

It was on August 26, 1959, when ice-cream colored Ford Zodiacs with fluted chrome still wafted along dual-carriageways, that the Mini 1.0 appeared. As a small boy my father took me to see one of the first at the Rocket Garage in Liverpool.

What was obvious even — perhaps specially — to a child was ingenuity of a high order. Alec Issigonis’s insistence on compactness and his refusal of “style” produced the most unusual and influential car ever. But Issigonis had a demanding personality: he insisted, for example, that discomfort kept drivers helpfully alert.
Read the rest of this entry »

This year MINI celebrates 50 years of the iconic Mini, and as a part of that celebration MINI is releasing a limited edition of the Cooper Works car, the John Cooper Works World Championship 50, of which only 250 will be produced and made available in Europe.

Inspired by John Cooper’s son Mike who was heavily consulted during development, the vehicle will be adorned with the British racing green of days gone by. According to the BMW press release, the car will be powered by a “155 kW/211 hp four-cylinder engine with Twin-Scroll turbocharger and petrol direct injection. The production version of the MINI John Cooper Works World Championship 50 features numerous exterior and interior details reflecting the racing pedigree of the brand.
Read the rest of this entry »

The Lane Motor Museum in Nashville, Tennessee, is excited to announce that their newest exhibit “50 Years of the MINI – Presented by MINI of Nashville” will open on Thursday, April 16. This exhibit will focus on the history and influence of the Mini brand over the last 50 years.

They would also like to thank MINI of Nashville for partnering with them in the creation and promotion of this exhibit. In addition to the exhibit, their support will allow the museum to host a special celebration of the 50th Anniversary of Mini in late August. According to the museum, a specific date along with more details will be available soon.

More information about the contents of the exhibit is available now online at the Lane Motor Museum’s Mini site.

In a survey of residual values carried by EurotaxGlass’s, publisher of the Glass’s Guide ‘trade bible’, the MINI 1.4TD came out with an average trade-in value of 62.3 per cent after three years. It is the second year in succession that the MINI has topped the table of the slowest-depreciating cars, although the downturn in used car values is indicated by the fact that last year it retained 71 per cent of its value after three years.

Seven of this year’s top 10 are cheap to buy and run, small and fuel-efficient. The almost identical Citroen C1, Toyota Aygo and Peugeot 107 were second, fourth and fifth respectively. However, the Ferrari F430 coupe and spyder took third place, retaining 60.9 per cent of their value after three years. The Lamborghini Murcielago was in eighth place (55.2 per cent), while rear- and all-wheel drive Carrera versions of the Porsche 911 were in tenth (54.8 per cent).

The Smart ForTwo was in sixth (56.7 per cent) while Seat’s Leon hatchback, in 1.9- and 2.0-litre diesel guise, came seventh. Toyota’s petrol/electric Prius hybrid was sandwiched between the Lamborghini and the Porsche in ninth place, retaining 55.0 per cent of its value.

Adrian Rushmore, managing editor at EurotaxGlass’s, said: “The factors that help make the MINI as close to recession-proof as possible in the current used car market are its strong image, reasonable running costs and its high levels of perceived quality. It also benefits from being seen as a good compromise for those who need to downsize from a larger, more expensive premium-brand offering.”

The worst-depreciating cars have mainly all been out of production for some time. The worst performing was the Alfa Romeo 166, which has a trade-in value of only 12.0 per cent of its new price after three years and 37,000 miles. The Rover 75, Rover 45/MG ZS and long-in-the-tooth Saab 9-5 retained between 14.6 and 17.4 per cent of their value respectively.

The rest of the 10 poorest performers were the Kia Magentis, Vauxhall Vectra, Jeep Cherokee, Renault Vel Satis, Mitsubishi Shogun Pinin and the Rover group’s short-lived City Rover.

The BBC’s Chanel 4 News is reporting that thousands of jobs at two UK car plants could be at risk as a result of a worldwide sales slump. General Motors, the world’s biggest car company which owns Vauxhall, said it will be bankrupt within months unless it gets an emergency cash injection from the US government to help it during the global financial crisis.

The firm said it had called off merger talks with Chrysler and was asking the government for help after using up $6.9 billion (£4.4 billion) in the third quarter of 2008.

The company employs around 5,000 workers at plants in Luton and Ellesmere Port, Cheshire, which produce around 215,000 vehicles a year.

Meanwhile, German car giant BMW announced that production of the Mini was to be curtailed, with workers at plants at Oxford and Swindon told the two-week Christmas shutdown would be extended to four weeks this year as a result of the credit crunch.

The motor industry has been hit by falling demand across the world, with sales of new cars slumping to their lowest level in 25 years.

The news from BMW follows an announcement earlier by Jaguar Land Rover that a voluntary redundancy scheme is to be extended to hundreds of workers.

GM said it planned to make more job cuts, including another 5,500 salaried and factory workers.But the Detroit-based firm warned that this alone would not be enough to keep it afloat.

GM chairman and chief executive officer Rick Wagoner said the firm would “take every action” possible to avoid bankruptcy.

GM’s announcement came hours after Ford revealed it had lost $129 million (£82.4 million) in the third quarter after burning through $7.7billion (£4.9 billion) in cash.

The car company said it would cut another 2,260 white-collar workers in North America, but added it could keep going through 2009.

On Thursday, the chiefs of Ford, GM and Chrysler, known as Detroit’s “big three”, asked the US Congress for some $50 billion (£31.8 billion) in federal aid to help them survive the credit crunch.