By Don Mecoy
The Oklahoman
 

Last year’s announcement that the legendary MG nameplate will be resurrected on vehicles assembled in Ardmore garnered serious attention. Very little new information about the project, which could bring hundreds of jobs to Oklahoma, has surfaced since that time.

But that doesn’t mean nothing is going on.

Marc Nuttle, the Norman attorney who is chairman of Oklahoman Global Motors, said negotiations with Nanjing Automobile Corp. on the design of the assembly plant at Ardmore Airpark and the vehicle it will produce are continuing with the goal of striking a deal by March 31 and issuing some major announcements in April.

“If we can meet that schedule, then we would actually be rolling cars off the assembly line early second quarter next year,” Nuttle said.

Nanjing, which bought the MG name in 2005, announced last July that it would manufacture MG vehicles at plants in China, England and the United States. Nanjing executives announced recently in a news release that the company would celebrate its 60^th birthday next month by rolling the first MG off its assembly line in China.

The company’s new factory in Nanjing is designed to produce 200,000 MG cars and 250,000 engines a year. Some vehicles will be sent to the former MG Rover plant in Longbridge, England, for final assembly. Nuttle said the company is on target to begin assembling sports cats at the Longbridge factory in June, two years after the plant was closed when MG Rover plant collapsed.

A group of Americans has been in England working to get the shuttered Longbridge plant prepared for production, Nuttle said.

“We’re helping with marketing, dealer network, services, which is what they don’t know,” he said. “Manufacturing, they get.”

MG will be Nanjing Automobile’s first stand-alone passenger-vehicle production effort. The company has a joint-venture agreement to produce Fiat cars and Iveco trucks.

At least three Americans stationed in Europe have returned to Oklahoma to focus on matters here, Nuttle said, “because I’ve got it to the point where our responsibilities are more North America than Europe, and that’s better for Oklahoma.”

Wes Stuckey, president of the Ardmore Economic Development Authority, said designs for airpark improvements undertaken in concert with the Nanjing project are complete or soon will be and construction will begin this spring. “We are proceeding with the design of the runway extension and will be ready to go out for bids in 60 days,” Stuckey said Friday. The Benham Cos. is starting to design the road improvements needed for the project. Water and sewer extensions are in the final stages of design and construction will start in May.

“We are spending money and are making commitments,” Stuckey said.

A recent benchmark that was met by Oklahoma Global Motors was repayment of a $5 million state loan that was used as seed money, state Treasurer Scott Meacham said. “The important thing know is that it was timely and with interest,” he said. “It’s positive that we got this money back.”

However, the worldwide project hasn’t gone off without a few hitches.

Nuttle admitted that dealing with Chinese government and Nanjing corporate executives can be a challenge, particularly when it comes to communication. All statements and documents must be translated from English to Chinese and back, Nuttle said.

“You can’t have dialogue back and forth,” Nuttle said. “It’s difficult.

Duke T. Hale, president and chief executive offer of MG Cars North America/Europe Inc., in an interview last year denied a reported statement by a Nanjing executive that the Ardmore project was just an idea. Hale said the executive, whose first trip to the West was when he came to Oklahoma in July to participate in the deal’s announcement, may not have understood the question.

Nanjing executives also must review and consult on all matters before reaching a decision, said Nuttle, who has the power to make decisions “on the spot.”

“There’s a cultural barrier,” he said. “There’s a lot about western contracts that still the Chinese government doesn’t understand. They just don’t. You just have to be patient.”

Nuttle, who worked with the first Bush administration on trade policy, was involved in discussion 15 years ago dealing with China’s efforts to join the General Agreement on Tariff and Trade, forerunner to the World Trade Organization. That, he said, provided him with keen insight into the vast differences in politics and culture between East and West.

“To be in the WTO, you had to have an intellectual property rights law,” Nuttle said. “You had to protect patents and trademarks. I remember my counterpart, his eyes glazes over; he was lost-confused to the point that it was distressing him.

“I stopped the meeting and said ’what’s the problem?’ And he looked at me and he said, ‘Now tell me again how you can own a thought. ‘He just couldn’t get it.”

Despite the obstacles of a project spanning three continents and two languages, and the challenges of getting three separate plants in operation, the deal is on target, Nuttle said.

“The plan called for the plant to begin construction somewhere around April in 2007,” he said.

“It takes a year to build a plant, three months to train the employees and then we would be in production in summer 2008. That’s what we announced. We’re still on track for that.”

Copyright 2007, The Oklahoma Publishing Company