Greetings,
Short answer: No, there has never been a Rommel factory active in Taurian space.
Long Answer:
After a careful review of the internal master factory list, there are no factories with in the Taurian Concordat that have been recorded as having built the Rommel tank in any era.
The factory list is a listing of all canonical factories in BattleTech publishing and was recently compiled as part of the Master Unit List project to serve as an internal development resource for published products. As is often the case, after twenty-five years of BattleTech, there were a number of contradictory factories in BT's history. When these contradictions occurred (CheepMechs one and only Factory being documented on both Dirtball and Balldirt) a continuity decision was made and one source was corrected. Often this was done by going to the senior staff to determine what the intent was for any given BT book published in the past. There have often been in universe rumors or incorrect information seeded into the game books over the years. This in universe information is not always correct. There have also been out right errors introduced into BT books (mostly older books) where something slipped past fact check and made it into print. In the case of rumors, they are just that and future BT products often reveal these rumors as false. In the case of errors, these errors are usually corrected in a future work. This is not a retcon but a correction of an error that never should have happened. Like when we published a Celestial with a standard cockpit and then fixed it to be a small cockpit.
After researching this extensively, as the project leader for the MUL project, and having consulted with senior staff, I can state that there have been no known Rommel factories in Taurian space.
As the Dark Age has yet to be written, by Catalyst, we cannot comment on the existence of any factories that might exist after 3085.
Further investigation reveals that the rumors of a Rommel factory were in universe disinformation on the part of the Taurians. In universe it is entirely possible that some nations believed this disinformation, for a time. By the time of the Jihad, information on nations active factories (thanks in part to the 2nd Star League) dispelled the in universe rumors.
So in the end, in universe reality reveals no factory, but in universe perception is not so sure.
Best,
Joel BC
