A collection of priceless antiques cataloguing the life of MG Rover may be the latest assets to disappear following the collapse of MG Rover.
Ever since Herbert Austin decided to open a car factory in 1905, the Longbridge site has become a sprawling, self-contained testament to the history of 20th Century manufacturing in Britain.
Tony Osborne, the site operations services manager at Longbridge and company historian, knows more then most about the priceless historical assets the plant hides behind it's gates. His day-to-day job was to keep the plant running efficiently. He worked at the factory for 33 years and now fears the historical assets could be lost.
He said: "It is worrying me but I would hope the Phoenix Trust would be able to help us save most of it. I just want the administrators to tell me first if they decide they have to start selling anything off so that I can have time to raise some money and save it for the people of Birmingham. I'll do whatever it takes to save them even if it means buying them and putting them in storage."
The most notable artefact at the plant is Lord Austin's original office which was preserved for posterity in 1957 after the building which contained it was demolished.
It then survived a British Leyland cull during the 1970s and escaped the hammer again in 2003 when it was dismantled and transferred to a new position inside MG Rover's conference centre.
It's been perfectly reassembled to represent the room exactly as Herbert Austin knew it at his death in 1941. Visitors see the room through a viewing gallery which houses his office chair behind his oak desk, his personal telephone, and even the panelled door that once led on to the private lavatory.
One of the panels still holds the legendary coin which Lord Austin was said to have flipped to decide the fate of the company in the barren times following the First World War. If it was heads he would work on and if it was tails if he would give up. Heads won and Austin then begged his workforce to toil for one month for no pay in return for a "job for life".
Carl Chinn, a prospective trustee of the Phoenix Trust which would take control of the directors shareholdings to benefit the workers of Longbridge, said: "I would like to see them saved for the trust and the people of Birmingham and I would liaise with the museums in the city to make sure we did that if they ever came under any threat.
"They belong to the people of this region and it would nothing short of outrageous if they were sold off.
"You cannot put a monetary value on things like this but from a historical point of view they are absolutely priceless.
"My hope is that the heritage at the site and the plant itself will remain here forever but my priority is to the workers of Longbridge at the moment so I do not even want to consider such an outcome just yet."
