Shanghai Automotive looks like beating rival Chinese carmaker Nanjing Automobile to the goal of building Rover-based cars later this year after getting the go-ahead from the central government.
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The Financial Times (FT) said the two automakers have been in a race to turn out cars based on MG Rover designs for the Chinese market since Nanjing won the auction last year to buy the remaining assets of the UK company from administrators – Shanghai Auto had earlier acquired the intellectual property rights to a number of Rover models.
The paper said the planning authorities in Beijing have been keen for the two companies to join forces and produce Rover cars together but Shanghai Auto has indicated that it intended to go it alone and a launch in the second half of 2006 is earlier than had been expected.
The FT added that the company now had approval from the National Development Reform Commission (NDRC), the planning body in Beijing, to launch its own-brand passenger cars at a new facility with annual production capacity of 120,000 cars and 170,000 engines.
The first model would be based on Rover’s 75 and the automaker was still eyeing the possibility of using the famous British brand name, which belongs to BMW, the Financial Times said.
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