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It may be owned by China’s Shanghai Automotive Industries Corporation, but MG Motor still has British blood running through it. The proof: The company is getting a new design studio at its factory here.

The new studio will serve the 200-strong design and engineering staff of the company for the MG and Roewe brands, both of which are owned by SAIC, China’s largest car producer. Roewe is the relabeled Rover, since Land Rover retained the rights to the Rover nameplate.

The studio will be the lead engineering center for SAIC’s own-brand products worldwide and for all MG and Roewe products. The team has already contributed substantially to the development of the Ford Focus-sized Roewe 550 and is creating an MG version of the same car.

Roewe already sits atop the J.D. Power China Sales Satisfaction Index, which has been in existence for 10 years. The brand scored 851 points out of 1,000, ahead of Audi (848), Dongfeng Peugeot (842), BMW (837), Mercedes (837) and Buick (835). The average score for all brands was 822 points.

The MG Motor engineering center is located on the site of the Longbridge, U.K. factory, which until recently was making the 14-year-old MG TF sports car. That model’s production has halted until next spring. The plant still has three assembly lines, all of them regularly maintained, leading to strong speculation that the company will restart mass production at the site, even if on a modest scale. However, these plans have yet to be confirmed.

MG-Roewe’s parent company, SAIC, are very eager to build their own SUV based on Sssangyong IPR but a launch date of the Ssangyong-Roewe has never been announced despite it being spotted dozens of times out testing. It could be that the rights to Ssangyong IPR is in a murky place right now straight after Ssangyongs bankruptcy which saw them kick SAIC out of the boardroom and straight out of Ssangyong affairs, the Roewe SUV was expected to be launched in the first three months of 2009. The same could be said for the Roewe 95, it was largely understood that SAIC would have been excited to show off their luxury Roewe 95 limo model at the last Shanghai Auto Show, but as that is based off the Ssangyong Chairman it seems that that might have been temporarily delayed as well.

Before SAIC attempted to even retrofit a Ssangyong with Roewe badges, MG were readying their own MG version of the Rexton. It was set to be a model that would bring in much needed cash to a cash strapped company, a car they could just bring over and deliver straight into showrooms with a nice little profit on top. Sadly, MG-Rover died before the MG Rexton made it into production. SAIC seem eager to build their own version for the Roewe brand to cash in on the current compact SUV craze in China, but it is unclear if MG will get the sports SUV. SAIC is happy to keep Roewe as a ‘luxury’ marque, where as MG will deal with more sports models, basically keeping the the old MG-Rover spirit alive. It would be wise to remember that SAIC are planning to keep the Roewe brand for domestic sales, where as the MG brand will go global as one of the first major Chinese brands to drive into Europe and the USA, which could mean that an MG branded Rexton SUV is not that far from becoming a reality, should it first become a sellable Roewe.

This MG 6 liftback could herald the return of MG to North America, according to officials from Chinese parent company SAIC.

Badged MG 6, the new four-door was the undisputed star of the Shanghai motor show. The MG 6 has been conceived to breathe new life back into the MG brand following its purchase by SAIC. The Chinese automaker also owns the former Rover, known as Roewe, which it bought from the Nanjing Automobile Group in 2007.

Although billed as a concept, the MG 6 closely resembles the car SAIC plans to put into production later this year based on the same basic underpinnings the Roewe 550, itself built around a modified version of the Rover 75 platform originally engineered by BMW.
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Last week at the 2009 Shanghai Auto Show, the Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation (SAIC) revealed the MG division’s newest MG concept—the MG6.

The MG6 concept is based on the Roewe 550 four-door sedan, which is said to use a modified version of the Rover 75’s front wheel drive platform from some years back. Of course this means the MG6 is set to come equipped with the K-series like 1.8-liter 4-cylinder gasoline engine. The twist—the MG6 will be available with a 160 hp turbocharged 1.8-liter for those looking for a little more punch than 130 hp that will come with the base motor. All of this is wrapped in a Ford Mondeo-esque like body and is slated to arrive as a production car in the Chinese market for 2010

The second phase of the MG facility, located in Pukou, Nanjing, has started construction after Chinese auto giant SAIC invested 2.566 billion yuan ($376.24 million), Beijing Youth said today.

Construction of the facility, which is to develop an all-new A-class car platform and the matched small engines, will be completed in 2009, according to Gao Yunhang, assistant general manager of MG sales company. When its construction is completed, the project will get an annual capacity of 200,000 vehicles and 250,000 engines, said Gao.

The small engines are all turbocharged engines ranging from 1.3L to 1.5L, Gao said.

The A-class car platform will build both MG5 and Roewe 350 models and will also develop MPV, hatchback and sedan models later, a source said. The MG6 is actually the hatchback model of Roewe 550, not just a common hatchback, the source disclosed.

MG, which went on sale in last August, couldn’t enlarge its market share by an MT edition as 90% middle- and high-class car market is occupied by AT models.

Data show that MG posted a good sales growth after the MG7 is mated with an AT/MT co-developed with Japanese manufacturer of automatic transmissions, AISIN Co. Nanjing Auto’s MG sales in October increased by 22% year on year. The MG3-series MT editions posted significantly better sales than the AT editions, taking 60% of the total sales.

This is the car which will put MG back on the map – in Birmingham. It’s called the Roewe 550, but Auto Express can exclusively reveal that an MG-badged version is on its way, and is likely to be made at Longbridge.

The 550 has been designed to appeal to British buyers – the lines were penned by a team of leading UK stylists working for Roewe’s owner Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation (SAIC). The Chinese firm recently bought NAC MG, and is now looking to use the famous octagon logo to give it a slice of the lucrative European market, as SAIC has decided not to bring the Roewe badge here. A car based on the 550 will be the first MG to go on sale.

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