SAIC Motor, MG’s parent company, has opened a new facility in Birmingham, the Birmingham in Michigan, not England’s West Midlands where MG has a final assembly plant and design/technical development centre.
The new base in the USA will extend SAIC’s North American operations.
Around 100 people will be based in the 30,000 sq ft offices in Birmingham, a suburb of Detroit. They will focus on three key areas: purchasing, logistics and technology and engineering.
The office will work with almost 150 different North American automotive parts, materials and component suppliers and logistics will concentrate on the export and import of automotive parts. It will also deal with the design, engineering and quality control for the development and production of vehicle components and parts.
SAIC has a long standing joint venture with General Motors and senior engineers at MG Motor UK are involved with GM on the development of future engines.
Last year SAIC Motor – which has Chinese joint ventures with GM and Volkswagen – sold over 4m vehicles and is the eighth largest automotive manufacturer in the world. China overtook the US to become the largest car market in 2009 and last year 20m new cars were sold there.

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