Its all true, well as true as a Xinhua report can be. In translation, done by our own fair hands:
After both Nanjing Autos and SAIC acquired their pieces of the British car company Rover group, they have been having face to face confrontations, for example, Nanjing MG released the Nanjing MG range of cars, the same day SAIC announced the prices of the Roewe range of cars. Both cars are based off the Rover 75 car.
The chairman of Nanjing MG, Mr. Wang Hao Liang, said spoke on the subject yesterday at an interview with various reporters at the Nanjing MG conference. in Beijing. Mr. Wang said that Nanjing’s MG7 will be the first car to be put into production by Nanjing MG which will coincide with Nanjing MG’s 60th anniversary on March 27th this year.
Both SAIC and Nanjing MG will focus on quality over the coming year, so they are not fully chasing a sales goal in 2007 and 2008, however, our reporters have learnt that Nanjing are aiming to sell 10,000 MG vehicles, and SAIC’s Roewe brand is aiming for 22,000 vehicle sales.
Nanjing strongly control both future domestic and international markets. Nanjing MGs representative Zhang Xin was quoted as saying “We have a 2211 plan, to represent Nanjing MG with its goals and strategic objectives. The first ‘2′ is to be well orientated with domestic and international markets, within 5 years we will have reached 200,000 vehicles produced, and sold. With the second ‘2′ we want to build production bases in both Nanjing and at Englands longbridge site, at the same time creating a Chinese international brand ‘MG’, creating a support system that will create sustainable development and innovation.’
Wang Hao Liang also went on further to say that in May, the classic British brand ‘Austin’ will also start reproduction in Englands Longbridge plant. Wang Hao Liang believes that Nanjing Autos strengths are in its brands and hardware assets. When asked SAIC’s representive believes that more competition is not a problem, the most important thing is that you do better as a person.
Although SAIC and Nanjing MG are not willing to link themselves as partners, but the similarity of their respective products, they are doomed to be competitors.
In this regard, a SAIC representitve the next model of new car will break away from Rovers shadow, it is a new model of car with the codename W261, it is a totally new car. Yesterday Nanjing MG expressed their wishes to keep the Longbridge production based open, whilst pursuing the cars graceful characteristics and improving the speed in the production developments strategy and to implement this strategy. Nanjing Autos hopes to continue to export products which are needed by the Chinese and International markets, and to bring out two new models of car every year.
So there you have it, Austin is making a come back. I wonder what they have up their sleeve? Hopefully not a rebadged MGTF! It seems that Nanjing MG and SAIC are having regular digs at each other, this could become quite an interesting spat over a period of time. Apologies for that very rough translation, but you get the idea!
A Cultural Note: The article talks about the 2211 plan, but doesn’t explain what the ‘11′ part of the plan is. This is because in Chinese the word for one (in this sense anyway) is read as ‘yao‘. Chinese has many words that sound the same, the word for want is also pronounced ‘yao‘ so, here Mr. Zhang Xin is playing with words saying he wants the ‘22′ plan. Two in Chinese is ‘er‘ so he says ‘er er yao yao‘
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