Thousands of unwanted MG Rover cars parked on a disused airfield in England have attracted the interest of an Iranian company that wants to help get the failed UK carmaker working again.
Dastaan Industrial Development,aprivate carmaker, told the Financial Times it had offered £20m last week for 2,000 cars and would like to buy more if Rover could restart production.
The offer came as the administrators selling Rover said they had begun talks with two bidders interested in buying it and reopening its Birmingham factory. One bidder is understood to be another Iranian company, backed by its government. The other was reported yesterday as being Russian. Gholam-Hassan Aghaee, Dastaan's managing director, said the company wanted to buy a further £30m of finished cars and was ready to pay £200m for 25,000 kits it could bolt together in Iran. But if that fell through, it would like to buy the production lines and site them in a poor region of south-eastern Iran.
"We have expressed readiness to buy the lines, [although] the first priority is to help Rover to continue its production because its international credit is important to us," Mr Aghaee said.
"Our representatives are already in talks in London, while a German financier is involved in financing the deal," he added, refusing to give details.
Phoenix Venture Holdings, former owner of Rover, agreed the initial sale of 2,000 cars to Dastaan late last year but was still awaiting a letter of credit in April when the company collapsed. "At the time, it was going to be very helpful but timing is everything," Phoenix said.
Rover has more than 3,500 new cars parked at a disused airfield in Upper Heyford, Oxfordshire, and another 3,500 used cars less than a year old at a nearby site. It is not clear how many are left-hand drive, which Iran would require, or which belong to dealers, who have already collected some of them.
Talks between Dastaan and Rover had begun in 2001 with a view to siting assembly plants in Zabol, provincial capital, and Chabahar, a special economic zone on the Oman Sea with advantages for foreign investments. Iran, with a 70m population, is a promising car market and the Middle East's largest car producer. Their cars are old and heavily polluting, particularly the 1960s Hillman Hunters bought from the UK in a previous deal.
The government sees their replacement with more environmentally friendly models as the solution to pollution in big cities.
