MG Motor UK on Thursday (13 April) built its first car for customer sale. The red, petrol-fuelled, 1.8-litre, turbocharged five-door hatchback was driven off the line by Lisa, the only woman working on the final assembly line so far.
The production launch of the first really new car to be completed in the former MG Rover/British Leyland/Austin Longbridge plant in 16 years generated much camera-wielding local media interest and a long round of applause.
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The 40 workers actually assembling cars and site total of 400 – the majority the 300-plus engineers in the adjacent engineering centre – is a long way short of the 6,500 or so at the time of MG Rover’s demise in 2005 but it’s a start and MG and its Chinese owners SAIC – production target for 2011: 4m – appear to be taking a patient, deep-pockets, long term view.
They’ve already poured “hundreds of millions” into the UK operation, according to sales and marketing director Guy Jones, with substantial building remodelling, the design centre, a data centre and a substantially reworked final assembly line to show for it.
Initially, it’s a very basic semi knocked-down (SKD) process with cars arriving from China welded, wired, painted and fully trimmed (including seats, dashboard, steering column and wheel) while some mechanicals, including rear suspension and hubs and even the rear exhaust box, are already in place.
The Longbridge line workers pre-assemble the front suspension, add the steering rack, dress and install the engine and ‘stuff up’ the completed assembly into the China-finished bodies, add the nose clip plus wheels and voila.
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By GlobalDataJones acknowledges it’s inefficient but is being used to “build up manufacturing capability” with the longer-term aim of bringing more assembly in-house when volumes permit.
Initial production rate is ramping up to 12 a day but insiders told just-auto the line, acquired from MG Rover but much modified since, has been designed for much higher rates and flexible production.
Initial five-door petrol turbo hatchback output will be followed by a sedan variant in a few months with diesels and left hand drive Europe output in 2012 and a new smaller car a year after.
“A big boost is expected from the diesels next year,” Jones said, adding that this year’s target is a modest 2,000-3,000 units of UK sales.
SAIC has ‘reserved’ 60 acres of the once much larger MG Rover site now fast being turned into a business park, a college campus and, right next to MG’s corner, new houses. There’s a mothballed paint plant (quite new when MG Rover folded) and room for a body in white assembly shop (welding equipment and jigs required) and sub-assembly area.
In a country still home to GM, Toyota, Nissan, Jaguar, Land Rover and Honda volume-assembly plants, sourcing panels, plastics and other bits as volume rises should not be a problem.
For now, though, almost everything is imported. A little lineside scrutiny, which also revealed current production is 2010 model year, showed that everything but some UK sourced fasteners comes from the mother ship in China.
Potential buyers will care less, of course, what matters more is vehicle quality, value for money and dealer support. The revived MG aims to be class-competitive and early consumer media reviews were mostly favourable with only really a few quibbles about interior plastic finish.
Best of British, then.
