A FEW weeks ago, one industry analyst asked about the death of MG Rover remarked: "Car companies don't die - they just get taken over."

At the time, that seemed unlikely as far as MG Rover was concerned. After all, it had been seeking a takeover with China's biggest car producer for nearly 18 months and it still hadn't found a way to merge before the administrators were called in.

It seemed as though no one was interested in the remnants of the last British-owned volume car company. A fire sale of the assets seemed the only option.

A month is clearly a very long time in the life (or death) of a car company.

This week, administrator PWC sits down with not one but three offers for the MG Rover company.

Even more amazingly, all of them could see the company's Longbridge plant, near Birmingham, restarting production in some form.

By last night, only three serious bidders remained.

They are:

l Shanghai Automotive (SAIC) and Magma: Headed by former Ford of Europe boss Martin Leach, this bid is said to be favourite. It invisages restarting production at Longbridge. In the longer term, Britain will become the company's new research and development headquarters.

Shanghai Automotive already owns the design rights to the Rover 25, 75 and MG TF sports car, plus Powertrain, the group's engine production facility.

This partnership will press ahead with the "on-off" Rover medium-sized 45 replacement, code-named RDX 60. This car could be on sale within 18 months.

Early mock-ups of the "new" 75 released last week were under-whelming. They appeared to be nothing more than a 75 with a nose borrowed from the 75 V8 model and a mild re-style of the rest of the bodywork.

Over the weekend, Magma was talking about 12 new models and annual Longbridge production of 100,000 cars. Many more will be produced in China.

However, the group is also talking about an investment of half a billion pounds and you don't get a dozen new cars for that kind of money. A full range would cost SAIC billions more.

l Nanjing Automotive: Once SAIC's junior partner in a plan to take over MG Rover, now a deadly rival.

Stung by a whisper campaign suggesting it was planning to "lift and shift" production to China, Nanjing leaked artist's impressions of the new models it hopes to build at Longbridge.

Nanjing envisages five new models over a number of years. These will be built in Britain and badged MG.

The Rovers will be made in China.

Bizarrely, Nanjing hopes to rebadge some of these cars as Austins because the name has a cachet in China (something that could never be said of Austin in Europe, where it is about as desirable as tartan trousers).

l David James and Kimber Consortium: The company rescue specialist hopes to use Longbridge as the base with which to relaunch MG.

It has modest plans but its long-term aim is to boost production to the 100,000 mark.

Interestingly, Shanghai Automotive seems to have been taken aback by the speed of the Nanjing bid.

Until last week, it had only expressed an interest in Powertrain, the engine business. But Nanjing's move for the entire company forced it's hand - either go for the lot or risk losing everything.

Some observers believe the Chinese bid may yet coalesce, although the way both companies were spitting venom at each other last week may make that more difficult.

What does now seem likely is that MG and Rover (and possibly Austin) will be back on our roads in some form soon.

If you were thinking about buying a cheap MG Rover, perhaps you had better get cracking before the prices start to firm up.