LDV, the defunct British van maker, sold to SAIC, is making a comeback, with UK sales restarting.

SAIC Motor Corp. has started shipping Chinese-built LDV brand vans to the United Kingdom seven years after it acquired LDV Group, a bankrupt U.K. commercial vehicle maker.

On Dec. 29, SAIC Commercial Vehicle Co., a subsidiary of SAIC Motor Corp., initiated the shipment of 3,000 LDV V80 vans to the United Kingdom.

The vehicles will arrive in Birmingham. SAIC Commercial Vehicle says it plans to open as many as 10 dealerships in the United Kingdom to market and sell the vehicles.

The van is built on a platform that SAIC bought in 2009 from LDV Group. The vehicles are produced in Wuxi, a city 140 kilometers west of Shanghai. They are fitted with a 2.5-liter turbocharged gasoline engine and a six-speed manual transmission.

SAIC Commercial Vehicle has yet to disclose prices for the LDV V80 to be sold in the United Kingdom. In China, the van has a starting price of 124,800 yuan ($19,200).

The company also has developed a multipurpose vehicle dubbed G10 on the same platform purchased from LDV Group.

In China, the V80 van and G10 MPV are marketed under the Maxus brand. Outside China, they are distributed under the LDV brand.

In 2015, SAIC sold roughly 35,000 V80s and G10s globally. Exports of the two models were estimated at 4,900 vehicles. Australia is the largest overseas market for the two models.

SAIC also sells passenger vehicles under the Roewe and MG brands. The vehicles are developed mainly with technologies that the state-owned Chinese automaker bought in 2005 from bankrupt U.K. carmaker MG Rover.

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