Ford buys Rover brand from BMW
Ford has bought the rights to the Rover brand name from rival car manufacturer BMW.The blue-opal exercised its right of first refusal on the name, which was negotiated after it originally bought Land Rover in 2000.
However, it is not thought that the deal will see an imminent return for the discontinued Rover brand, which stopped production after MG Rover went into administration in April 2005.
A spokeswoman for Ford's Premier Automotive Group told the Guardian that the purchase would help to negate the confusion caused by Rovers and Land Rovers being produced by separate manufacturers.
"We are not ruling out reviving the Rover brand, but we are not going to use it in the near future either," she said.
"By using the Rover name on another vehicle, there would be plenty of room for confusion."
Until its closure last year, the majority of Rovers intended for the UK market had been constructed by the car plant in Longbridge, near Birmingham.
The site, which was once the world's largest car manufacturing plant, housed the production of vehicles such as the Rover 200 series.
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