The Project Kimber consortium aiming to revive production at MG Rover will announce a new strategy today to avoid a "Chinese auction" of the carmaker's assets.
The group, which has received backing from billionaire financier Robert Tchenguiz, said it will approach administrators PricewaterhouseCoopers with a new proposal to buy the assets of the Longbridge operation.
Barrie Wills, spokesman for Project Kimber, dismissed reports his consortium was having trouble raising the required funds.
Mr Tchenquiz, who owns the Whyte & McKay whisky company, Pubmaster chain and Yates' Wine Lodge, is thought to support the deal, but is awaiting a guarantee before committing his money.
Mr Wills said: "We have secured funding for our deal three times, all from City of London high profile blue chip investment companies.
"The problem is quite simple. We are being provided with the money to acquire the assets, but the administrators are insisting we have to do a single transaction for the whole business.
"We cannot cherrypick, and our investor has asked us what are we going to do with the assets we do not need."
Mr Wills said he thought Nanjing Automotive and Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation ( SAIC) were waiting in the wings to buy the assets of Rover at a vastly reduced price.
He said: "They want us to go away so they can mount an auction between themselves for Rover and Powertrain.
"It is in the interests of the Chinese to stall and stall, so we get a sale for the assets at the end of October. Instead of paying £40 or £50 million, it will be £10 million at best."
Business troubleshooter David James, who is leading Project Kimber, said he expected to file a £40 million bid for MG Rover within the next 24 hours.
Mr James said he would aim to develop MG as a small-scale "niche" car manufacturer at Longbridge, but has no interest in reviving mass production at the West Midlands site.
He said a successful MG would be able to attract other niche manufacturers from around the world to construct their cars at Longbridge.
He said: "We believe that we can develop the MG side of it into a niche car category which we can build on and bring other niche cars from British history into the site as well.
"We also believe that we have got a number of major international manufacturers around the world who will rapidly bring their assembly operations for their own niche motor cars to Longbridge."
