The car industry is no stranger to bitter and wrangled takeover battles, but two of China's top car-makers were squaring up this week for a particularly messy scrap over the remaining assets of MG Rover.
China's oldest car-maker, Nanjing Automobile Group, stole a march on rivals Shanghai Automotive Industry Corp (SAIC) to buy what's left of MG Rover, Britain's last volume manufacturer of cars, and its engine unit Powertrain for a figure believed to be in the region of €72 million.
As Nanjing became the latest buyer to try and make a success of MG Rover, after BMW and the Phoenix investment group failed, the Chinese car industry was abuzz with speculation after the surprise outcome to the auction.
Would Nanjing's coup in buying the MG Rover assets lead to co-operation, perhaps even a merger, between it and SAIC? Would the loss-making Nanjing be able to use Rover as a springboard to becoming an international car-maker, under its own brand?
SAIC, which earlier this year bought the intellectual property rights to the Rover 25 and 75, was deeply shocked when PricewaterhouseCoopers, Rover's administrator, announced that Nanjing had won the auction over the Shanghai giant and a group of British entrepreneurs. SAIC said it was "extremely disappointed" in the way the sale was handled.
Since then, in another twist to the saga, Nanjing - based in the city which used to be known as Nanking in English - has approached the unsuccessful bidders to try and sell a chunk of the company it has just bought at auction, seeking outside funding and a management team for the British operations in order to restart making MG cars.
Keen to assert its rights to manufacture the Rover 75 and Rover 25, SAIC phoned its lawyers, Baker & Mackenzie. It said it would go to court if necessary.
Indeed, the only Rover model over which SAIC do not have claim is the MG TF sports car, a niche model of which fewer than 15,000 cars are made a year. Certainly not a promising base from which to start a mass-car business.
While the central government in Beijing is unlikely to tolerate an unseemly public slug-fest between two state-owned companies over intellectual property rights to a foreign firm, there are clearly issues which need to be sorted out before this story is over.
China's oldest car-maker, Nanjing has long been one of the minnows of what is potentially the world's biggest car market and has not managed to take advantage of the boom in auto sales in the way that SAIC or other car-makers in China have. Its joint venture with Fiat has failed to prosper, making less than 30,000 cars last year, despite huge production capacity, with a market share of just 1.4 per cent. It lost 340 million renminbi (€35 million) last year and its efforts to form joint ventures with Ford and Nissan came to nothing.
But it has powerful backers. Nanjing is controlled by the government of Jiangsu, one of China's richest provinces. Nanjing told the state-run Xinhua news agency, a spokesman said Nanjing had been preparing for the Rover acquisition for two years and that it had several financing means at its disposal, including backing from the city and provincial governments.
But it has also been quick to say that it is ready to accept investment from Chinese partners too, which could mean SAIC becoming a partner in the deal.
"We welcome all kinds of co-operation but have not decided what form it will take," said Nanjing spokesman Liu Ningsheng. "We bought the remaining assets but excluding the debt. We will not use the Rover brand name. For us, capital is no problem as we have many channels for it."
Initially, the group plans to start production of new models and engines within 12 months on a 180-hectare site in the Jiangning development zone of Nanjing, where it is already producing commercial vehicles, but where it has a lot of excess production capacity.
Nanjing plans to keep on around 1,800 of Rover's original 6,000 British workers and will be maintaining some manufacturing and research and development facilities in Britain while moving some engine and car production to Nanjing.
But some analysts reckon this battle is far from over. There was speculation that SAIC would wait until Nanjing's financial situation deteriorates further and then step in to buy the assets at a knockdown price.