MG Cyberster - long-term review

I lived with an MG Cyberster, the only fully-electric soft-top two-seater car in the world, for six months, averaging over 1,000 miles a month. I have drawn two conclusions from this I’d like to share with you.

Should you buy this car? In its current form, no. Should MG have made this car, and should it continue to develop it? Absolutely. Essentially, I love the idea, but I’m not persuaded by the Mk1 Cyberster’s execution.

Some of the flaws were apparent on the very first day it arrived. The driving position is too lofty, the seat isn’t supportive, and there’s not enough adjustment for someone of regular build, six foot in height, to get remotely comfortable. During our months together I developed an ailment called ‘Cyberneck’. My spine still clicks when I look left and right.

The infotainment, massively dumbed-down from the state-of-the-art version tested in Chiona by my colleague Tom Ford, is dated, and the Apple CarPlay connection (wired only, via old-skool USB) wasn’t reliable enough. So much of a modern car’s experience is dictated by its screens and connectivity. The MG’s aren’t at the races – heck you can’t even see two-thirds of them, hidden behind the steering wheel.

And the app. Buggy, and lacking in useful features like scheduled charging or remote cabin pre-conditioning. An EV is really hamstrung if you can’t pre-warm it on a cold winter’s morn.

The roof rattles, one of the cabin door bin lids fell off, and it’s too fiddly to deactivate the lane assist and speed bond. Too annoying to leave them on too.

That’s most of the bad stuff – there’s one more big one I’ll come back to. But we must acknowledge all the things the Cyberster did excellently. It was fast, decently refined on the motorway, the stereo was excellent and the boot is very generous for a two-seater drop-top, even when carrying charging cables. Its servicing costs were a fraction of its petrol rivals and dealer staff were polite, courteous and helpful on the phone. They sounded as though it was a fun novelty to deal with a Cyberster.

And that’s probably because this is rare. In our half-year together, I saw exactly three other Cybersters, and I’m not totally, completely convinced they weren’t other journalist test cars or dealer demos. None of them had a private reg…

This means if you class head-turning, conversation-sparking attention as bang for your buck, the Cyberster is the best-value car in the world today. For under £60,000, nothing (besides the adorable Microlino) gets chins wagging like it.

And all the attention is so positive! Fellow EV believers at charging stations. People waiting for my parking space with their indicator on. Shoppers. Dog-walkers. Wherever we went, people had nothing but praise for the car’s looks, genuine awe at the price (presuming anything with Lambo doors is £100k+) and curiosity over the brand. “MG? Really? Thought they went bust. Who owns them now? Tesla?”

Winter range, due to the lack of pre-conditioning, was poor – versus a claim of 310 miles I usually saw 210-220, rarely passing 2.5 miles per kWh. As spring turned to summer the average leapt to 3.5 miles per kWh and sometimes surpassed 4mpkWh on a lazy Sunday cruise. Range settled into a perfectly adequate 270-280 miles. Once, it even went beyond 295 miles between plug visits. That’s genuine GT car ability, from an EV.

Where the MG tripped itself up was as, well a sports car. It cruises astutely and it’s nippy in town, but the middle bit – the B-road blasts, the roundabout giggles, the A-road attack dog… all just fell apart thanks to the woefully soggy damping. MG says it sharpened the car up for Europe but that doesn’t ring true because if anything, it’s lazier than the Chinese spec car Top Gear tested last year.

So, this brings me to my Cyberster conclusion. Like I said, right now this isn’t the finished article. But there’s potential here. Here's the to-do list:

1. Send it to Lotus or Prodrive for a handling set-up. It’s unlikely to come back a Cayman and A110-beater, but at least tie down the lardy body control and inject some life to the corpse-like steering.
    
2. Throw all the screens in the bin and start again. Make sure the new interface can be read without playing hide and seek with the steering wheel.
    
3. Code a new app, and make sure anything you can adjust in the car (sat-nav, temperature, charging target) can be adjusted from a phone.
    
4. Find a way to mount the seat lower – and ask someone who knows how to make great seats where to put the bolsters and stuffing. Volvo would do.
    
5. Buy an old Boxster, dismantle the roof and learn how Porsche makes soft-tops that don’t rattle. If the budget is running a little dry by this point, try a Mazda MX-5 instead.

See, I could be all snarky and rude and laugh at MG for even bothering. MG doesn’t need the Cyberster after all. It’s already in the UK top 10 best-selling car charts, doing a roaring trade.

But I think MG does need this car. It sprinkles glitter on the website. It draws gazes into dealerships. And you’re not telling me MG would’ve been the featured brand at the 2024 Goodwood Festival of Speed – sculpture, fireworks and Chinese drumming band included – without the halo effect of a rear-drive, long-roadster?

There are already quite enough meaningless, dreary e-crossover boxes. Awful imagination-bereft lozenges with names and interiors as memorable as the seventeen-digit model number of my fridge-freezer.

We need more mould-breaking EVs. That’s what captures our imagination. When someone tries something a little bit risky. Citroen Ami, Renault 5, BMW i3, Porsche Taycan Cross Turismo, Hyundai Ioniq 5 N. EVs are interesting when they don’t try to be like all the other cars.

And you could never, for better or worse, accuse the Cyberster of that. I won’t miss it being in my life. But I am rooting for MG to have another go - before someone else does.