##Rover Badge--left##Ford is negotiating to buy the Rover brand name following the final break-up of BMW's UK subsidiary and the US firm's chief executive Jac Nasser (pictured below) sees a role for Rover as a prestige small and medium car brand, sitting under Volvo in its Premier Automotive Group.

Ford would walk away from the Rover break-up with almost all its most valuable assets, including Land Rover, the Rover research centre at Gaydon (development centre for the R30) and the Rover name.

Ford refused to comment on 'speculation', but a BMW spokeswoman said: “There are some discussions going on about the Rover brand name. The Ford thinking is it would prefer to have the whole name - Land Rover and Rover.

It could avoid confusion in the future over rights and copyright. “We need to wait for these negotiations to be concluded to see the outcome. The first step is to make a contract with our new partners and afterwards the new Rover owners will discuss with Ford who keeps the name.''

##JackNasserLo.jpg--right## The BMW board is expected to agree the sale of Rover and MG to Alchemy Partners, despite BMW agreement to talk to John Towers about his Phoenix consortium.

Jon Moulton, Alchemy managing partner, said he was confident of completing the deal. It would open the way for Alchemy to relaunch the business as MG Car Company, rebadge the present model range, cut production at Longbridge to “less than 100,000 cars a year” and shed thousands of Rover jobs.