Make MGs cool again? The Cyberster does its best

This was once a proud British brand that made fast and sexy little convertibles with two seats. Its new all-electric Cyberster certainly looks the part – but this carmaker still has its problems.

Stephen Corby

The Cyberster is all about retaining the old MG magic.

3 min read

7 hours ago

The Weekend Australian Magazine

Surely, when a car company invests huge wads of money in developing a new car, it considers what its competitors will be and whether it can lure people away from them. Other industries do this, like the mad scientists at Domino’s who convince themselves that a cheeseburger pizza will compete with an actual cheeseburger.

Yet when MG created the Cyberster, its visually appealing new electric roadster with a name that seems designed only to appeal to Whovians, its creators must have imagined they were competing only with themselves. MG was once, of course, a proud British brand that used to make sexy little convertibles with two seats, just like the Cyberster but with character – much of which was supplied by their petrol engines. And then, in 2007, in a move it has done an Orwellian job of keeping secret from 98 per cent of people I meet, the brand was bought by a giant Chinese company, SAIC Motor, and turned into a purveyor of cheap transport boxes on wheels.

Maintaining the link with the heritage of the brand was vital in fooling people into thinking MGs were cool, which is why there were a lot of Union Jacks splashed about, despite the fact that modern versions are about as British as straight teeth, or eating chicken’s feet. Sure enough, the Cyberster’s badge celebrates 100 years of MG (the car itself is notionally a spiritual successor to the famous MGB of the 1960s), which is almost as disingenuous as selling a Trump Bible printed in China.

The Cyberster is all about the old MG magic, but gussied up with the kind of performance that would have blown the bloody doors off the original roadsters, because there’s an electric motor on each axle for rapid acceleration. And I do mean rapid – when I pressed the bright red Super Sports button on the steering wheel and planted my foot I shouted expletives so loudly that my daughter, who was 800km away at the time, turned to her brother in shock and declared: “Wow, Dad never swears!”

When I pressed the bright red Super Sports button on the steering wheel and planted my foot I shouted expletives.

I have driven other vehicles that can hit 100km/h in 3.2 seconds, but none of them were tiny and slightly tinny convertibles like this.

I have driven other vehicles that can hit 100km/h in 3.2 seconds, but none of them were tiny and slightly tinny convertibles like this. I had the distinct feeling that I was doing something ill-advised, like jumping on a half-built roller coaster where some of the track hasn’t been welded together yet.

The sense that the Cyberster isn’t quite finished is most noticeable in its sexy scissor doors, which look great from a distance but have a proximity sensor slapped on the outside, as if someone suddenly realised they were likely to bang into things. This means that if you’re standing close to the door – in a shopping centre car park, for example – it’s really hard to get it open. And when eventually you do, the only obvious way to shut it again is to leap into the air to touch the button, a movement that will make you look like a child attempting to dunk a basketball (there is also a button on the key fob, it turns out). You’ll want to shut the door after giving up on getting in, because the aperture is too small and shaped like the heel of a shoe.

If you do make it inside, you’ll find that the nicely fitted-out cabin is somewhat spoiled by the fact that two of the three screens in front of the driver are obscured by the steering wheel.

While it is almost ill-advisedly quick in a straight line, the Cyberster is not so great at other things, like corners, steering or dealing with bumps, and this is a big problem because of its competitors. A Mazda MX-5 is an infinitely more joyful convertible and can be had for under half the price of the Cyberster, which starts at $115,000. The MX-5 does have a petrol engine, of course, so perhaps MG thinks it is getting out ahead of another obvious challenger, the all-electric version of the Porsche Boxster, which will raise the bar for what EV sports cars are capable of when it arrives next year.

I’m willing to bet that will be the sort of contest that gets called off by the referee in the first round, but even today you can buy a 718 Boxster from Porsche with a 2.0-litre flat-six engine for $135,000 that is not as fast as the MG and yet still 1000 times more enjoyable.

While it is almost ill-advisedly quick in a straight line, the Cyberster is not so great at other things, like corners, steering or dealing with bumps

The Cyberster is simply too heavy (1985kg), too quiet and too underdone to be any kind of competition for the Mazda, and it won’t be within a light-year of the Porsche, so selling this car sounds like an implausible mission. Because it’s an electric roadster, the people at MG can of course claim that it currently has no genuine competitors – but if they do, I will laugh in their faces.

Sadly, however, they will laugh right back at me because a third of the first shipment of MG Cybersters were pre-sold to excited customers, despite the predicted price at the time being closer to $150,000. Honestly, writing that makes me feel like I just ate a cheeseburger pizza.