MG Rover collapsed in April 2005 with debts of more than £1bn. Its demise came just five years after BMW sold Rover to Phoenix Venture Holdings for a tenner, with the newly renamed MG Rover having just lost two of its prized assets in Mini - shrewdly retained by BMW - and Land Rover, sold to Ford: BMW had already figured out a SUV path all of its own.
Despite strong sales for the MG TF, the success of ZR, ZS and ZT, and the sale of the bulk of its site in Longbridge, the company fell into Chinese hands, consigning the Rover name to history. Two cars with contrasting fortunes arrived in the eleventh hour but were unable to save the company. This is their (brief) story: