West Midlands - motors and music

A year since mass car production returned to Birmingham's Longbridge plant - with the first of the MG6 models rolling off the production lines - MG Motor UK's Chinese owners say they sold 446 cars in the first three months of 2012.

That is better than any of the company's annual sales figures from the past five years, when it was producing the MG TF specialist sports car.

But the figures are a far cry from Longbridge's heyday - when the plant was the largest in a region of the UK which became synonymous with the motor car.

Here - with Prof David Bailey from Coventry University Business School and Gillian Bardsley from the British Motor Industry Heritage Trust - take a nostalgic look back at how Longbridge, and the whole West Midlands, gave us motors and music.

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Music by ELO, Dexys Midnight Runners, Joan Armatrading, UB40, Duran Duran, Wizzard, The Specials, The Spencer Davis Group, The Moody Blues, The Move, Slade, Steve Winwood and Ocean Colour Scene.

Includes images from Getty Images, PA, British Motor Industry Heritage Trust and MG Car Club Ltd. Archive audio from BBC News. British Leyland and Austin Rover advert audio courtesy British Motor Industry Heritage Trust. BRMB Radio archive courtesy Free Radio Birmingham (formerly BRMB).

Slideshow production by Paul Kerley. Publication date 13 April 2012.

Related links:

On the MG6 production line at Longbridge - BBC News

Heritage Motor Centre - Warwickshire

MG Car Club

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