The beleaguered British car industry suffered a fresh blow yesterday when MG’s Chinese owner backtracked on plans to manufacture large volumes of the marque at Longbridge.

Nanjing Automobile Corporation, which bought the assets of MG Rover for £53 million two years ago, said that most of MG’s production would take place at a new plant in China.

The company, which said originally that it would employ 2,000 people to produce 80,000 cars at Longbridge, announced yesterday: “The newly established manufacturing line in Nanjing will be responsible for much of the assembly process, but all right-hand [drive] MG TF roadster customer orders will be subject to final assembly in the revived Longbridge plant.”

Longbridge is expected to start production in the next few weeks with just 250 workers.

Nanjing insisted, however, that its aim was to “revive, maintain and develop MG”.

The scaled-down plan for Longbridge is the latest in a series of blows to hit the car industry in its British heartland of the West Midlands. At Christmas, Peugeot closed its Ryton factory, near Coventry. Production of Land Rover’s Freelander was moved from Solihull to Merseyside last year and two years ago Jaguar closed its famous Browns Lane factory in Coventry.

Nanjing bought the assets of MG Rover when the independent carmaker collapsed in 2005.

Nanjing refused to specify how many cars it will manufacture when production gets under way at Longbridge. Its statement led to speculation that work at the factory effectively will be reduced to building cars from kits.

Terry Pye, of the union Amicus, said: “This has come as a shock and a real disappointment to the ex-Rover workers and the local economy. It is way short of what we expected, which was 1,000 people working there. But 250 is just a drop in the ocean.”

Richard Burden, the Labour MP for Birmingham North-field, which includes Longbridge, said that he would ask Nanjing for clarification over production plans at Longbridge and whether it was still committed to building a research and development centre, as had been planned.

“If they want to be a global player, then to have a base in Europe has to make sense,” he said.

Julie Kirkbride, the Conservative MP for the adjoining constituency of Bromsgrove, said: “It has always been our fear that the proper production of the MG would not come to Longbridge. This would seem to confirm that and that all they wanted was the technology.”

Ms Kirkbride said that there would have been a better future for Longbridge under a proposal by Jon Moulton, head of the venture capital group Alchemy, which was put forward seven years ago. However, the Government and unions backed a scheme for volume production, which later collapsed.

Nanjing has developed a few experimental models of a revamped MG TF, with production expected to start in April. Initially the company, which won a bidding race for MG Rover against Shanghai Auto-motive Industry Corporation, struggled to get financial backing for the MG venture and mounted a lengthy search for partners.

When MG Rover collapsed, it employed 6,000 people at the 100-year-old Longbridge site.

Aston’s future

Final bids are due today for Aston Martin, the luxury car marque UBS, the Swiss bank, is running the sale Bidders include Doughty Hanson, a consortium including James Packer, Magna, the car components maker, Permira and two other bidding groups thought to be US-led Ford, which is selling Aston Martin, originally set price expectations between $1 billion and $2 billion To get through to the second round, bidders had to submit offers above £450 million Some bidders have expressed concern about items in Aston Martin’s books that could cause them to lower their bids

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