MG Cyberster - long-term review

Here’s a fact for your ultimate car nerd file: the MG Cyberster wasn’t the first electric MG sports car.

The Cyberster went on UK sale in 2024. A whole year earlier, MG restoration specialist Frontline were offering an electric conversion. But the plot thickens, my sceptical friends. Despite Frontline’s core business booming, they aren’t really doing EVs any more. What’s going on?

To find out, I headed down to deepest Oxfordshire to dig around in Frontline’s workshop. I love restoration outfits like this. You walk in and literally smell the quality. The metallic sheen of the prepped bare bodies. The immaculate new suspension and virgin brakes waiting to be fitted. The glistening bespoke paintwork, the heady aroma of expensive hides on the upholstery deck. Frontline makes crusty, slightly beardy old English roadsters into absolute jewels: objects of true desire that would happily grace a hypercar collector’s garage.

But no EVs any more. Why? Because the demand simply wasn’t there. After the initial buzz, only two were actually ordered. Frontline duly fulfilled both customers’ wishes, and say that if someone arrives at the factory gates with a well-thumbed chequebook and a plug socket, they would do another – but it would likely get subcontracted to a specialist rather than being done in-house. The workshop’s crammed full of orders enough as it is.

What’s ironic is that, chatting to some of Frontline’s passionate staff, they admit the dyed-in-the-wool MG aficionado community aren’t necessarily fans of their gorgeous work – not just of the EV: of anything that adds modern performance, handling or equipment to a worn-out MGB or MGA.

To this most traditional of fanbases, a smattering of unreliability, oil in your eyebrows and breath that smells of leaded petrol is all part of the MG ownership tapestry. Having an exquisite nut-and-bolt restoration is a cheat code.

Can’t say I agree. A friend’s dad had an MGBGT when I was about seven. I never saw it run. Every time I walked past their house and saw the garage door up, it was more dismantled than the last time. More sorry for itself. And in the end, he just gave up and got rid, because it was ruining his life.

Mind you, there’s a catch to this shortcut to MG heaven. The sumptuous quality of the Frontline MGA I borrowed on a glorious late spring day goes hand-in-hand with an eye-watering price.

This particular car has had the full modernisation suite applied: new running gear, a new chassis built to better-than-new standards of stiffness, and a rortier tuned Mazda MX-5 engine and gearbox. It sounds authentically raspy on its throttle bodies and stainless steel pipe, and drives with a delicacy that its original creators in the 1950s wouldn’t have believed. But it’s £140,000. That’s the price you pay for a world-class restoration.

So, what is the MG enthusiast who wants a more modern ownership experience to do? Try a Cyberster? Well, it’s certainly the bargain of the two, at less than £60,000. But weirdly, it’s not a whole lot more modern. Frontline will install USB ports and Apple CarPlay if you like – and the connection is more reliable than the new Cyberster’s.

The MGA had LED headlights and heated seats like the modern car too. And believe it or not, it was miles more sophisticated to drive. Where the underdamped Cyberster jounces and flops along a B-road as though the chassis is made of balloon animals, the MGA is deft and accurate, born to thrive on the unique challenge of the B4491.

Having parked the two cars up to admire them, I’m glad its British-led design team didn’t succumb to the temptation of a retro look. Instead of an upright grille, doe-eyed lights and lashings of kitsch chrome, they created something that looks properly modern and – ironically in this company – a lot more expensive than it actually is. Most passers by guess it costs six figures. They’ll never guess it’s the British racing green car that does…

Still, if you want a brand-new MG from the good old days, I can recommend a place that’ll make your dreams come true. Just bring your deepest pockets when you arrive.