MG building Chinese cars in England

It’s a far cry from Cecil Kimber assembling MG sports cars from bits and pieces left over from Morris-Wolseley Group sedans, but the MG badge is alive again in England - under Chinese ownership.

The story is complex - after Morris absorbed Wolseley and several other manufacturers into the British Motor Corporation, BMC was itself absorbed into British Leyland, which was ultimately taken over by the British government and then collapsed. After a series of other owners, various trademarks and other assets were purchased by Chinese companies, while the right to produce Morris’s greatest success, the Mini Cooper, went to BMW.

In China, the rights to the MG badge first went to the Nanjing Automobile Company, which was then purchased by the Shanghai-based SAIC Motor Corporation. For a while, it looked like the Chinese might start building new MGs in Oklahoma on tribal reservation land, but that plan ultimately fizzled. Now they’re shipping kits back to England from China, and performing final assembly on the new MG TF LE500 roadster in Longbridge, England.

The specs on the MG TF sound like fun -it's a mid-engine, rear drive, two seat sports car with a 1.8-liter engine and a 5 speed manual transmission. The engine makes 133 horsepower and 122 pound-feet of torque and gets about 35 MPG.

The downside is that MG/SAIC wants about $32,800 for one, and they're available only in England.