Let’s kick-off with a hypothetical. Were I to ask a PH Sunday Service gathering, ‘Who here owns an MG 6?’ I’d be lucky to get one hand up; probably the fella wearing the ‘I gave up on life and bought an MG 6’ knitted tank top. And if I asked, ‘Who has an MG 4?’ I bet quite a few hands would rise, with some confidence, too. After all, it’s a good electric car for the price. Nothing wrong with that. But asking, ‘Who here would like to own an MG Cyberster?’ would, I reckon, have hands shooting up like daffodils in spring.
Even if you don’t agree with my hypothesis, there’s no denying the upward journey of the SAIC-era MG: the uninteresting ugly ducklings are turning into desirable swans. And from my point of view, the Cyberster is a swan. I had it for four days, and every time I glimpsed it from the living room window I spent lingering moments studying its design. I spotted all sorts of notes: Corvette C8 and F-Type in its overall design, with hints of original Z4 in the swoops along its flanks. I’m not saying the styling is perfect, mind. Those arrow-shaped rear lights make the backend look like an illuminated contraflow sign but, overall, it’s a hit.
I know it is because everyone stares at this all-electric, two-door, drop-top as it whooshes by. They come to ask you about it when it’s parked, too. Of course they do. With its sleekness and scissor doors, it could be £200k and Italian. But it isn’t. It’s British, sort of. Sure, it has the might of Chinese industry behind it, but it was designed by a Brit – Carl Gotham – at SAIC’s Advanced Design Studio in Marylebone, London, England.
Whatever you think, can we agree that the MG badge finally adorns something that looks like an MG should? Good. And it’s priced like an MG should be, too. Rather than £200k, the entry-level, 340hp, rear-wheel-drive Trophy is £55k. It does 0-62mph in 5.0 seconds, but that’s not the car you’re gawping at here. This is the top-tier, dual-motor GT. It has 503hp and, accompanied by a hefty 535lb ft of shove, does 0-62mph in 3.2 seconds. Yet it costs only £60k. I say ‘only’ because rumour has it the all-electric Boxster will start at £75k, while the Polestar 6 will be even more – perhaps twice that – when it arrives. And if you think the Boxster will come as well kitted out as the Cyberster, you’re one peg short of a clothes rack.
Whether it’s in Trophy or GT spec, the Cyberster is loaded to the gunwales with features. The only options I can see are different paint colours and a red hood – instead of the standard black. So the Cyberster is a halo for MG – something for punters to dream about – but ownership is far from a pipe dream.
Is it built to a price, then? No. The interior feels far from cheap. It has lashings of (admittedly faux) leather and Alcantara, all stitched neatly. And despite some serious prodding to prove otherwise, it appears to be built as well as any current Porsche I’ve tested recently. As well as its interesting mix of materials the interior, like the exterior, is another interesting mix of styles. Again, the Corvette C8 comes to mind in the wrap-around screens, while the small, portrait-orientated central screen, which runs the climate controls among other things, reminds me of a McLaren 570S’s. But there was something else the overall style reminded me of, and it took a while before I twigged.
It’s only flippin’ K.I.T.T. At last, my boyhood fantasy (the other one) becomes reality. The multitude of screens make it a doppelganger for Michael Knight’s BFF and that’s not all: it’s ridiculously quick, powered by a futuristic propulsion system, it talks to you, you can talk to it, and it drives itself. I mean, come on, that’s uncanny, right? So I should’ve been in heaven, but…
The Cyberster’s challenges start with those fancy doors. They’ll no doubt appeal hugely to young geeks, old show-offs, and many in between, but I lost interest in them within 20 minutes. Now, I have no problem with scissor doors. On McLarens they boost the theatre and the practicality if you’re parked in a tight spot. But those are manually operated, while the Cyberster’s are electric. And S.L.O.O.O.O.W.
How slow? Slower than the slowest and most frustrating electrically powered tailgate you’ve ever encountered. Slow enough that you get really annoyed waiting for them to open, and dread forgetting something in the car – life’s too short for such a palaver. And get this: despite their glacial speed, they have a sensor that’s meant to stop you getting whacked in the chops as they come up. Seriously? The only person who could accidentally get hit in the face by a Cyberster’s door is the sort of person who’d get run over by a steamroller – and quite frankly, just hand them a Darwin Award and leave ‘em to it.
If you stand anywhere close to the door while it’s in slow motion, the sensor stops it. And when you press the open button to restart it, it goes back down again before you can make it come back up. At this point you’re scanning the scenery for rocks – either to break the window to get in or bash yourself over the head, just to make the misery stop.
Once you’re finally inside there’s another problem. I’m 6’3”, or 191cm for those reading in decimal, and, well, I don’t quite fit. Technically, yes, I can squeeze my limbs, torso, head and into the Cyberster, but it’s never properly accommodating. I’ve read that MG UK asked for the seating position to be lowered specifically for our market, but it’s still way too high for a sports car. My eyes were level with the top of the windscreen, forcing me to slouch in the seat, which compounded the lack of legroom. If you’re less than six feet you’ll probably fit fine, but you’ll still feel like you’re sitting on the Cyberster, whereas you’ll feel happily ensconced in a Boxster.
My next gripe is with the screens, of which there are four. The central instrument screen is fine: it shows the important stuff, like speed and range, and you can configure it to look classic or more space-agey. Then you have the two screens flanking it. The one on the left is mainly for the infotainment functions; the one on the right for other stuff, like trip data and software updates. Trouble is, both are quite small and obscured by the steering wheel, so seeing them, let alone operating any of the tiny icons, is tricky.
Then there’s the central, lower screen I mentioned earlier. It does the climate controls but other things, too, like the drive modes and screen brightness. It’s also quite small and includes random stuff, like the teeniest icon you’ve ever seen for turning on the fog lights. But the main issue is the sheer number of screens. If you’re forgetful, like me, you genuinely lose track of what feature is where.
As a result, I spent lots of time not looking where I was going, with the Cyberster bonging me, telling me to concentrate on the road. That’s a sensible instruction, but when the car’s a minefield of screens and icons, I felt I was being set up to fail. And my, my, the Cyberster loves a bong, and for all sorts of reasons. Each one had me looking away from the road again to read a tiny message telling me what I was doing wrong this time. I’d get a bong for that, too.
On the plus side, the roof goes up and down in around 10 seconds, which feels fast relative to the doors. And despite the bouffant buffeting – due to my hair being in the airflow – driving an electric roadster roof down is surprisingly fun. You’d think the silence would make the experience sterile but no: it’s terrific. There’s something rather enlivening in hearing the sounds of the outside world as you whiz through it. It’s like sitting in a stealth fighter on wheels – or K.I.T.T. in Silent Mode.
And when you ramp the motors up to full poke – by pressing the big, red, Super Sport driving mode button on the steering wheel – it’s like K.I.T.T. in Pursuit Mode. By ‘eck it’s quick. So quick that the first time I opened up the taps – or should that be transistors these days? – my girlfriend, who’s Brazilian, reverted subconsciously to blaspheming in her mother tongue. So, if you heard a Doppler effect scream of ‘Jesus Cristo!’ and were offended, she’s very sorry.
In Super Sport mode it’s so quick it rattles your eyeballs, and that’s not a simile. It really does, or at the very least gives them a wobble because the Cyberster’s straight-line pace made my vision go squiffy. If you’re an MGB owner, puffing on your pipe and twiddling your toes in your tweed slippers, thinking, ‘It’s time for an upgrade,’ a word of caution: you will feel like that chimpanzee they launched into space.
You can also turn on some fake engine noise and, unexpectedly, I liked this. It has three volume settings, and I liked it so much I chose the loudest. Not everyone will approve of fake noise, of course, which is why you can turn it off. But for me it added some aural drama when I fancied a change from the thrill of serenity.
Speaking of which, the refinement is good with the hood up. There’s not much road or wind noise, although there’s a bit of a shimmy through the body. That surprised me. After all, the Cyberster sits on MG’s Modular Scalable Platform (same as the MG4), with the battery forming part of the car’s backbone, so I thought it would be more rigid. Other than the shimmy, though, I was impressed by the suspension in town. The roads near me are generally awful, but the Cyberster padded over them deftly without thumping abrasively, even over the worst potholes. There’s just an underlying firmness at slow speed but, for a sports car, it’s not punishing by any stretch.
When I did stretch the Cyberster, on a country road, I discovered another limitation. You know what I’m going to say now, don’t you? Yes, it’s the dreaded weight issue. This car, in GT spec, is 1,985kg. That’s over half a tonne more than a Boxster and it shows. Along a typical, undulating British B road, the Cyberster is out of sorts – the under-damped vertical movements pushing it, and me, out of our comfort zone. Maybe the Trophy will feel a little more controlled without the 100kg front motor.
The GT is more at home on smooth, sweeping A roads. That’s where you can exploit its healthy grip, decent balance and accurate steering. There’s not much surface sensation through the wheel, but the steering’s nicely weighted in its default mode. If you prefer it heavier or lighter, you can mix and match the steering’s weight and other parameters by delving into the individual drive-mode settings.
What about the brakes? Well, even Porsche doesn’t always get its regen braking right, so…hats off to MG, which has. You can lean on the brakes with confidence thanks to their progression and ultimate bite. You alter the amount of regen by clicking the left-hand paddle – from little to pronounced – plus there’s a one-pedal mode and an auto mode, which slows the car automatically depending on, say, if the car in front slows down.
Both versions have a usable battery capacity of 74.4kWh. If you fancy the Trophy you get a combined WLTP range of 316 miles, while for the GT it’s 276 miles. Either is a pretty good tally for a sports car. The 38-minute wait for a 10-80 per cent charge is acceptable, too – bearing in mind this isn’t a mile-munching company car.
Other things to note? Well, the boot’s a good size and there’s space for soft bags behind the seats; unlike an Alpine A110, you won’t struggle to store your wash bag in the MG. And being an MG – a modern one – it’s warranted for seven years and 80,000 miles. It only needs a service once a year or every 15,000 miles, too.
Right, would I buy a Cyberster over an A110 or a Boxster, then? No. I’d buy either of those instead because they’re nimble sports cars. The Cyberster isn’t a nimble sports car. If anything it’s a soft grand tourer, which is fine, but because I don’t really fit it’s not the GT for me. Yet there’s a reason I’ve wanged on about it in such detail: despite its flaws, I like the Cyberster, and I really admire MG for making it. MG’s beaten everyone in delivering an affordable, usable, two-door, electric drop-top – and yes, that includes the Tesla Roadster, which was neither cheap nor usable. This one is, and while it’s not perfect even the silly electric scissors doors demonstrate it’s not a car that’s been done on the cheap.
If MG went ‘doors to manual’ and tweaked the suspension, would I buy one then? Perhaps, but only when I’m older. And no, not because the Cyberster’s another ‘old man’s’ MG’. But were I to shrink a little that would solve the space issue, so then I’d fit.
SPECIFICATION | 2024 MG CYBERSTER GT
Engine: Dual electric motor, 77kWh battery (74.4kWh usable)
Transmission: single-speed, all-wheel drive
Power (hp): 503
Torque (lb ft): 535
0-62mph: 3.2sec
Top speed: 125mph
Weight: 1,985kg
Range: 276 miles (144kW max charge)
Efficiency: 3.2mi/kWh
Price: £59,995
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