MG Rover is reported to have delivered a February 14 deadline for the conclusion of negotiations to buy Daewoo's factory near Warsaw.

MGR has told the Polish creditor banks that it will walk away from the £75m deal if they don't make a decision by then.

According to today's Financial Times, the deal would see old tooling and machinery from the Longbridge factory shipped out to the Polish plant to continue making models regarded as too old for the west European market for former Soviet bloc consumers.

Although MG Rover's other venture with China Brilliance also appears to be under threat after the Liaoning state government took control and ejected its chairman Yang Rong, the company has recently struck a deal with Tata of India to import a modified version of its Indica small car and sell it in Europe later this year as the Rover 15.