The countdown to the sale of MG Rover is close to winding down, writes Manufacturing Editor John Revill...

Like a child who was never picked for the school football team, MG Rover has been waiting to be selected to press ahead with its future.

Following the BMW pullout and the takeover by Phoenix Venture Holdings in 2000, the need for a partner to develop new models was imperative.

PVH tried, PVH failed, and this ultimately led to the failure of the whole enterprise which came to a crashing halt on Thursday, April 7.

Earlier options included talks with Malaysia's Proton in 2001.

Then Rover said it was striking a deal with China Brilliance, a producer of trucks and cars. Six months later the head of Brilliance disappeared and the deal collapsed.

Rover has begun importing cars from India's industrial group, Tata, and rebadging them as CityRover.

But sales were poor. It is ironic that just over three months after Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation (SAIC) finally baulked at the MG Rover's mounting debts and fears over its solvency, it has now returned to the fray.

When they walked away, suddenly, the administrators were called in.

Controversy remains about who pulled the plug - was it the Government who wanted to let the dust settle before the General Election?

Then Trade and Industry Secretary Patricia Hewitt came to Longbridge the day after the announcement for crisis talks with union leaders and managers.

Meanwhile administrators Pricewaterhouse-Coopers began work, with the aim of finding a buyer.

To head off redundancies and to attempt to keep the supply chain intact, the DTI loaned MG Rover £6 million to retain the workers for a week.

Tony Woodley, general secretary of the Transport & General Worker's Union, said there was a one in a million chance that production could be restarted, but it had to be taken.

He seemed to sum up the desperate mood as drastic attempts to find a buyer continued, but ultimately failed.

After repeated efforts to restart the SAIC deal, the Chinese eventually walked away and with it most people's hopes of a Longbridge revival.

One tersely-put memo sent from SAIC to the DTI could be paraphrased as: "At what point will you take no for an answer?"

Meanwhile, the workers at Longbridge and supply companies braced themselves for the worse.

Eventually the redundancy letters started coming through, and the 6,000 workers made unemployed.

Slowly bidders started to emerge, with initially 630 expressions of interest in buying parts or whole of MG Rover.

Some were probably on "fishing trips", but others were more serious.

They ranged from Russian billionaire Nikolai Smolensky, who wanted to add the marque to his holdings in the niche sports manufacturer TVR, to Iranian companies Daastan and Khodro.

The administrators, obliged to raise the highest price in order to get something for the creditors owed £1.4 billion, refused a fire sale of individual assets, but held out to try to sell the business as a complete operation.

At a resigned meeting of creditors, they told people they would give it until September before they began a break up of the business.

PWC's fees of £4 million for the first two months of the administration, and an estimated £1.5 million per week in running the mothballed plant were eating into the £80 million of assets left in the business when they were called in.

PWC whittled the interest down to nine contenders who have the assets in place to pull off a deal.

Problems surrounded who owned the intellectual property rights for the Rover 25, 75 and K Series engines which were sold by Phoenix to SAIC for £67 million last year.

The money was used to keep the business afloat, but the deal seemed to give SAIC a veto on any of the bidders.

The interested parties have now been reduced to three: SAIC, Nanjing Automotive and Project Kimber, a consortium of Midland automotive engineers and executives.

All offer some hope of restarting production again, but too late for most of the 6,000 workers who lost their jobs.