In Bee-Em's purchase of a pantsful of Rover holdings, they walked off with the rights to the Rover name. Post-selloff-debacle, they shunted the Land Rover bits to Ford, but held on, rather inexplicably, to the rights to the Rover name, giving FoMoCo the option to purchase it. Word's just come down that Ford finally picked up. Now, with Shanghai Auto doing the MG thing, and despite the fact that nobody besides aging Brits care about the brand, Ford's saying that they think it's a good thing to hold onto, despite the fact that they're not going to turn and burn it. Our take? Either they're gonna include it in a package selloff to rid themselves of Land Rover, or they'll sell it to Nanjing, just to piss off SAIC.
Ford says to buy Rover brand name from BMW [Reuters]
Related:
Nanjing's MG Rover Deal: The Art of War with Shanghai Auto [Internal]