Land Rover is to buy the trademark of collapsed car giant Rover, according to UK media reports.
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Sky News said on its website that Land Rover owner Ford has told current Rover brand owner BMW that it wants to exercise an offer to acquire the name.
The trademark was not included in negotiations to sell the collapsed British car firm to Chinese company Nanjing, which is planning to build MG sports cars at the Longbridge factory in Birmingham, the report added.
Ford reportedly said that BMW had given Land Rover a right of first refusal to acquire the Rover trademark when it sold the Longbridge manufacturing operation in 2000.
“We believed then as we do now that it is in the interests of the Land Rover business to own the Rover trademark. We have today informed BMW of our desire to exercise this right to acquire the Rover trademark,” Ford said, according to Sky News.
The Daily Telegraph newspaper noted that BMW’s decision would leave China’s Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation with a branding headache.
The world-famous Rover brand, whose badge features a Viking longship, had been heading to China after Shanghai agreed to buy it for over GBP11m five weeks ago, the paper said.
However, that deal had always been subject to the agreement of Ford, which had secured a veto on any sale when it bought Land Rover from BMW for £1.4bn in 2000.
The paper said that Shanghai Automotive would now have to find a replacement for the Rover brand, which it had planned to use on its cars.
A Ford spokesman told the Daily Telegraph his company was not going to start making Rovers: “The main objective is to buy the brand but I don’t think we are going into production. We are not going to make Rover cars.”
BMW confirmed that it had been told by Ford that it wanted to buy the Rover brand. “We have received notification from Ford,” a spokesman told the paper.
The Telegraph noted that Shanghai Automotive, which bought the rights to the Rover 25 and 75 for £67m in late 2004, months before MG Rover went into administration, had looked to be the front-runner to buy the Rover brand name as well.
It had been understood that Shanghai Automotive had agreed not to make off-road Rover cars to placate Ford’s concerns. Clearly these assurances were not enough, however, the paper added.
