SAIC have a development center in sunny old England, Lemmington Spa to be exact, where they are busy creating the W261, Roewes second car after the Roewe 750. The photos were posted on SAICs own Chinese language site with the added black bits, obviously giving the car a bit of a rudimentary disguise. The development center was part of Ricardo 2010 but has since been handed over to SAIC to continue development. The W2 model looks like the one that was set up for the Shanghai and subsequent Chinese auto shows, it looks really good and like a true ‘Focus Fighter’ that Autoexpress so eloquently stated a few months ago.
Click the below images to see bigger images
China Car Times knows that the Ricardo employees like to occasionally visit these parts, and we’d like to say good work on that W2. Looks, nice.
Me thinks there should be mention this vehicle was in development before Rover went into administration.
Did Rover even have anything in the R&D dept before they went under?
This is more of the fruitition of an idea that Rover was trying to put out for ages. The proof is in the puddin’.
http://www.channel4.com/4car/news/news-story.jsp?news_id=5394&ref=archive
http://www.austin-rover.co.uk/index.htm?rovtcvf.htm
There’s even mention of Brilliance, creepy no?
Methinks the same! I also note that most medium size vauxhalls in the UK look suspiciously like a drawing I saw of a proposed Escort/Focus rival by MG Rover about 5 years ago before their sad demise.