Yahoo Autos Exclusive: Top secret plan to revive the Morris Minor
The new Minor would have likely been central to MG Rover’s revival
A bold Anglo-Chinese MG Rover revival plan to resurrect the Morris Minor came within an ace of succeeding back in 2005.
The scheme was developed in the immediate aftermath of MG Rover’s bankruptcy in April 2005 and led by late former Ford of Europe and Maserati boss Martin Leach’s Magma Holdings consultancy and Shanghai Automotive Industries Corporation (SAIC).
It was one of three competing bids for the remains of MG Rover, which included the hardware to manufacture the Rover 25, 45 and 75 models, as well as the K Series engine.
The Minor element of the plan has only now emerged via your reporter, who was confidentially party to some details of the proposal at the time. The car wasn’t detailed in the Magma-SAIC bid, presumably because Leach didn’t want any competitors to get wind of it.
Indeed, Steve Young of Indego Consulting, then a key collaborator with Leach, says the Minor revival idea “was something Martin came up with – I wasn’t aware of it”.
Young’s specialism was more on business, rather than product planning. Nevertheless, it’s likely that the new Minor would have been central to MG Rover’s revival under Leach.
The Magma bid, backed by China’s biggest car maker (which now owns MG Motor, of course), had real credibility, thanks to a combination of factors: Leach’s impressive industry career; the backing of a company already familiar with MG Rover; SAIC having been in serious negotiations to buy the company before it went under; and the support of Unite consultant and former union leader Tony Woodley.
Young says: “SAIC would have done all the engineering work with input from the UK. They had the capability. General Motors [which has a sizeable joint venture with SAIC] had supported them heavily with an engineering centre and were very generous in getting them up to speed.”
The SAIC plan included new monospace mini, medium and large platforms, and it was onto the smallest of these that the Minor would likely have been built, powered by the K Series engine.
The successful bidder stood to gain the rights to not only the MG and Rover names but also Morris and Austin. Reviving the Minor was far from outlandish.
Retro cars were heavily in vogue during the early 2000s – think the Volkswagen Beetle, BMW Mini, Fiat 500 and Ford Mustang – and the surprise return of a famous, much-loved model name would have added real impetus to the rebirth of the business.
