IN March 2005, a transport ship anchored at Portbury docks in Bristol having made the 5,000 mile voyage from Pune, a sprawling city in the Indian state of Maharashtra.

On board, carefully packaged and protected from salt water, were hundreds of cars – the last gasp of Britain’s sole remaining indigenous volume motor manufacturer.

But no one was at the docks to meet the ship.

MG-Rover was in financial turmoil and everyone who was anyone was needed at the Longbridge plant, in Birmingham, where frantic 11th hour negotiations were taking place with a delegation from China in the hope of concluding a joint-venture deal.

So the 300 second generation CityRovers were quietly unloaded and parked up in a holding area close to the docks.

The CityRover was another spectacular own goal by MG-Rover’s feckless management.

It was a marriage of convenience between the ambitious Tata conglomerate, India’s largest manufacturer, and the ailing MG-Rover concern which desperately needed a small car but didn’t have the expertise, time or money to develop such a vehicle.

When Tata - with one eye on the European market - offered MG-R its Indica hatchback at a bargain price the British company couldn’t believe its luck.

The Indica – Tata’s first stab at a proper passenger car as opposed to something based on a commercial vehicle – was a bit rough around the edges (particularly the edges of the cheap plastic trim to be found in the cabin) but it was built to take the punishment dished out by New Delhi’s roads, used a proven engine (bought in from Peugeot) and, best of all, it was cheap.

So cheap that MG-R could afford to ship them half way around the world and make a few changes before slapping a badge on and sending them into anxious dealers desperate for a Metro replacement.

A modest improvement programme was given the go-ahead. New body pressings would have been prohibitively expensive so the team was restricted to changing the bumpers and swapping the wheels. New suspension improved the bouncy ride (necessary to tackle cart tracks in the Indica’s domestic market) and a new engine mount tamed some of the vibration which found its way into the cabin.

Marketing came up with the name CityRover – no one wanted to call it the Rover 15 – and stuck a small union flag on the boot in the hope buyers could be fooled into thinking the ‘new’ model was as British as roast beef and Yorkshire pud.

When the sums were done, each Indica would cost MG-R just £1,600.

With no start-up costs and no real re-engineering required, that meant MG-R could sell the CityRover at a keen price and still make a handsome profit.

At this point the company made a crucial mistake. With sales of the ancient 25/45 twins in freefall MG-R was critically short of cash. A promise that the CityRover would be Britain’s cheapest new car on sale was quietly forgotten. Instead, the range started at £6,500 – a price that put it within striking distance of much better rivals, like the Ford KA.

By the time the CityRover went on sale there was no money for a press launch, TV advertising or glossy full page ads in the Sunday supplements. The CityRover slunk into dealer showrooms almost unnoticed and when the press did get to test drive it journalists agreed the car was too expensive.

Far from selling 30,000 examples a year, MG-R struggled to shift a mere 6,000.

Within 12 months management opted to have another go – sprinkling improvements around the cabin –and it was the first consignment of the Mark II cars which reached Bristol in March 2005.

Sadly, the game was already up and MG-R went bust the following month. Eventually, the MK II CityRovers were claimed by the administrator. He sold them off for £3,500 (ironically, making good on management’s original promise that the CityRover would be the UK’s cheapest new car).

This troubling story gives the CityRover two unwanted distinctions: it was the last new model launched before MG-R crashed and the only one ever to go on sale after its parent company ceased to exist.