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Alf, you been working today? I take it you looked in on the way to collecting the newspaper?

=THE SKEPTIC: Final Tears For MG Rover

By Howard Wheeldon
A DOW JONES NEWSWIRES COLUMN

LONDON (Dow Jones)--MG Rover's Longbridge plant in Birmingham was forlorn and miserable looking over the Christmas break.

One could envisage how the 275-acre complex, where Herbert Austin started building cars 100 years ago, might look in a few years. The complex will be demolished and replaced by a giant hypermarket or some other modern office and mixed housing, leisure and shopping development.

Hoping Chinese automaker Nanjing Auto, which acquired MG Rover in April, might soon produce cars again at Longbridge is like hoping summer will start in January.

It isn't going to happen. There is neither market for the cars nor a will at the Chinese carmaker to produce cars in the U.K.

It's amazing to think that British Motor Corporation, which became British Leyland and later Austin Morris, was the largest automaker outside the U.S. only 40 years ago. It was then also the world's largest exporter of cars.

This isn't the first time the site has stood empty. It was vacant for four years when Austin bought the Longbridge site in 1905. But it's vain to hope for a repeat a century on.

The demise of MG Rover is the story of the decline of British-owned volume car production. Mini and even Jaguar and Land Rover survive in mixed health, but they don't disprove the point.

Fine names such as Austin, Morris, Standard-Triumph, Wolseley and Riley, not to mention commercial vehicle makers like Crossley and Albion, have given way to U.K. producers called Ford, GM, Peugeot, Honda, Toyota and Nissan. They produce more British cars than the British-owned manufacturers ever did.

MG Rover's failure isn't just one of management and marketing. It is also the result of financial markets demanding too much in the short-term, thus blocking long-term investment. The approach could bring more MG-Rover type failures in the future.

St Modwen, the property company that owns 228 acres of the site, and received a mere GBP5 million in rent from MG Rover, must be rubbing its hands at the prospect of a new development.

Who knows? Maybe some Christmas lights on the demolition cranes will make the place a little cheerier looking next year.