MG Rover has been looking east to avoid going west for so long that cynicism about its latest oriental "salvation" is understandable.
Since the "Phoenix Four" executives acquired the ailing business from BMW for £10 in 2000 there has been a long list of partners and projects, real and imagined, touted as eastern promise of a brighter future.
But what sets the latest new dawn apart is that MG Rover has, for the first time, made it clear that without a deal it is doomed. If Beijing blocks the partnership with Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation (SAIC), it will consign the firm to the history.
"The future of the company rests on this deal," John Towers, chairman of Phoenix Venture Holdings, which owns MG Rover, is reported to have told dealers and staff.
But while much of the world's media appears to have concluded that the SAIC deal was a Chinese whisper short of a formality, a more detached analysis suggests a less optimistic outlook. It has been said that SAIC is prepared to invest £1 billion for a 70 per cent stake in a separate joint venture company, with the deal to be concluded by January. This will spawn a range of new models, the first of which will be ready by mid-2006 and provide a platform for one million new car sales.
This doesn't square with SAIC's stated ambitions, nor the underlying economic and industrial reality. SAIC has said it has three strategic goals: to sell one million vehicles a year; to join the Fortune 500; and to sell 50,000 of its own brand cars by 2007.
With 800,000 vehicle sales in 2003 and a flotation planned for next year, SAIC is on track to meet its first two goals. But to create its own branded marque is more problematic. SAIC already has two long-established joint ventures in China with VW and General Motors. But these western giants own the crucial technology on which a self-grown model depends.
But no longer. SAIC has already paid about €60 million, in a binding deal, for access to MG Rover's intellectual property and its Powertrain engines and transmission business. This is old technology, of between six and 12 years ago. - too old to develop a new model for European consumption. However, its more than ample for SAIC's growing and less demanding domestic market.
The question arises as to why SAIC would want to invest £1bn in a joint venture when it has already secured the technology it needs to meet its short-term goal for €60m.
MG Rover has very little else to offer. The last of the Longbridge land was sold last week, the parts business has been sold and the financing arm has been restructured. All that is left is a car company teetering on the brink of insolvency, with a declining market share, old technology and an ageing product range.
Without the marketing muscle or technological expertise required to work with key suppliers on concurrent engineering of the new car, where different segments are developed separately but in tandem, it will take MG Rover/SAIC until 2008 to bring the first new model to market.
That is too late for the Chinese to develop a model that is technologically daunting and offers uncertain volume potential. No surprise then that SAIC has denied that it has a timetable for a deal. MG Rover seems destined to live in interesting times.
- Guardian service
Another wave of Asian cars: p3
Andrew Hamilton
A new dawn or an ignominious end as a Chinese takeway: two theories as Rover moves into 2005. It's not the first time the once great British marque came with an oriental flavour - Rover and its close cousin Triumph were rescued by Honda in the 1980s. Indeed Japanese engine integrity was the mainstay of much of Rover's appeal during this period.
Today Rover aficionados are thin on the ground. Dene McQuaid, now with BMW, was associated with Rover for much of his working life. He says customers got confused with the name changes: "It was part of state-owned British Leyland, it was in with Jaguar and Standard-Triumph and there were others - all very confusing."
Ignominy had already arrived when Rover pronounced its Indian- built CityRover a failure at the recent Paris motor show - chief executive Kevin Howe said it had to be repositioned. Long before that there was the futuristic 2000, its 3500V8 sidekick and the SDi, a cavernous hulk presented by Leyland nearly 25 years ago.
But, for an ageing generation, the classic Rovers of yesteryear are the ones that really represent the Rover image. We think of cars like the bulldog-nosed 90 which we first drove as a young reporter in Fermanagh in the late 1950s - it was the car of our publishing boss and because he was elderly, he needed transportation to faraway places like Belfast and Dublin. For a young reporter, it was a wonderful respite from the courts and councils that were an everyday work diet.
Rovers then were posh with beautifully smelly leather that exuded a gracious country living feeling. Rover customers lived gracious lives too: apart from our boss, we can remember that they were John Brooke, later Lord Brookeborough (registration IL 9999), a couple of Sirs, one Earl and the County Court judge.
We were aspirational towards Rover ownership then but it wasn't affordable. Now it is but no thanks, we don't want it and our rejection has nothing to do with the Chinese.