With a future product strategy guided in part by an awareness of its past and a keen desire to attract younger buyers, MG looks set to emulate the success BMW achieved 22 years ago in reviving the Mini brand.
Mini, which like MG was once part of the ill-fated Rover Group, is now again a strong-selling global brand with a comprehensive and well-received product line-up and bold ambitions for an all-electric future.
It’s hard not to draw parallels between the two brands on the basis of their shared histories and trajectories alone, but also because they seem aware that their Britishness – however intangible that might seem, now that one is German-owned and the other Chinese – remains a selling point.
That the Cyberster’s tail-lights are modelled on the Union Jack, like those of the latest Minis, is testament to the marketability of this heritage, but MG has hinted at plans to take this even further by returning to accessible sports cars.
Whether diehard enthusiasts (among them drivers of the venerable B and Mazda MX-5-baiting F) will engage with this ploy remains to be seen. But certainly it will be easier to link the MG brand to its 100-year history when its cars are more obviously related to their forebears.
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It is embarrassing when desperate Little Englanders grasp at the last vestiges of badge loyalty for products of foreign owned international companies.
I'd rather MG get out of its current design doldrums, look to the future, and forging its own identity instead of trying to look 'British'
For goodness sake Autocar - what 'British roots'?
There is no connection whatsoever between this Chinese MG and the MG that died decades ago.
You insult everyone and everything MG by propagating this nonsense.
eseaton, thank you! I was about to post precisely what you have stated. Your post is eloquent and to the point. And Felix, you are an utter tool. Change professions.