The MG Rover story starts on May 9, 2000. At least, that was when BMW formally concluded its sale of the Longbridge factory, the MG brand, the licensing of the Rover brand, and the production and design rights to the cars that were being built at the time to a four-man team called the Phoenix Consortium. This came at the end of years of proposals and halted deals between BMW – seeking to offload its loss-making British operations after just six years of ownership – and various investment groups, other manufacturers and business proposals. A deal with a group called Alchemy, based on slimming down the operation significantly and turning the company into a low-volume sports marque based around MG, seemed the most promising but collapsed in the last stages of negotiations.
When it became clear that no other car maker would be interested in taking over Rover Group as a going concern, John Towers (former Rover Group chief executive, who had left the company in 1996 over disagreements with BMW bosses about the future direction of the firm) and a group of other businessmen put together a rescue plan to continue operations as a volume car maker. Former Rover dealer principle, John Edwards, was part of this group and convinced 20 existing Rover dealers to assemble the finances to help a management buy-out on its way. Meanwhile, a PR campaign was waged to bring media and political pressure to bear against BMW and Alchemy.
Phoenix looked to do the opposite of Alchemy, focusing instead on making Rover cars as a high-volume, mass-market manufacturer. BMW agreed that any other bidders would receive the same £500 million capital injection that Alchemy had negotiated; it was essentially paying anyone to take Rover off its hands.
BMW was already beginning to feel the storm of bad publicity for its perceived betrayal of the company and its people,
