MG Cyberster - long-term review

I want to talk about the Ford Kuga plug-in hybrid… said no-one ever. Bear with me while we jog down memory lane. 

Ford delivered a Kuga PHEV for a TopGear.com test in mid-March 2020. Over five years ago now – jeez. Doesn’t time fly? I happened to take it home one evening.

It sticks in my memory because it came just as Covid struck. The virus was already rife across Europe and was gaining blanket news coverage in Britain, but we didn’t engage lockdown until mid-March. With the stay-at-home order in place, Ford couldn’t collect their shiny new Kuga, so it also stayed at home. With me. For three months.

This was novel because I’d never lived with an electrified car for so long. 2020 was a different time – when EVs were rare, curious creatures. The Nissan Leaf, the Renault Zoe… that was about all you were likely to see whistling around on British roads.

It might’ve been the sheer tedium of no regular travel, but during my once-a-week government-mandated trip to the supermarket, the Kuga was a bit of a delight. I enjoyed whooshing about with the engine off, watching the engine mpg readout click upwards into infinity. I liked the sense of re-gen braking adding otherwise wasted energy back into the battery.

But most of all, I liked the reaction from other people to its peacefulness. Obviously it made the usual ‘warp-hum’ noises at parking speed to avoid smooshing absent-minded day-walkers in the Lidl car park. But – and perhaps this was the sense of comradery that came out of the pandemic – people seemed to appreciate this big lumbering family car moving about in such a quiet, non-polluting manner.

Five years later, I’m living with a pure EV for the very first time. It’s my daily-driver, my airport run shuttle, my commuter, my Sunday funster, the supermarket sweeper and a pain in the backside when I spy some do-uppable furniture on Facebook marketplace and can’t collect it in a two-seater drop-top.

But once again, I’m really liking the low-speed peace. And when the roof’s down, the experience is heightened. The other day I had to find an address in a sleepy village, tucked down a narrow, winding street. The breeze rustled the leafless tree branches overhead, the birds chattered, and the MG slipped silently along completely unobtrusively. We all know EVs are quiet and that’s handy for staying on good terms with the neighbours, but when the roof’s off, it’s really relaxing to be among the noises of the countryside without an engine interrupting the ambience.

There is, however, a ‘but’ arriving. As we’ve learned from all EVs, no engine noise means other creaks, rattles and squeaks can’t hide. So your electric car has to be built like a bomb shelter.

The Cyberster’s fit and finish is worthy of a £55,000 sports car. The dashboard is solid, the seat mounts well-anchored, and the suspension doesn’t groan when it’s presented with a speed bump.

But all of that good work is undone by the very thing that makes the Cyberster such a novel experience: the soft-top roof. When it’s raised, it creaks and rattles on its mountings, and the window seals fidget. It’s nothing serious – the roof doesn’t leak, or flap about on the motorway. It all feels well-tensioned and tightly wound. But it jiggles about, which you notice when there’s nothing else disturbing the peace.

Some convertible owner’s forums recommend applying Vaseline to the roof seals, but my neighbours already think I’m odd for standing outside and timing how long my doors take to open, without approaching the car with a tub of lube. My solution is simpler: get the roof down more often. It takes ten seconds, and when it’s lowered, it doesn’t make a sound.