The times when MG still built fun roadsters with combustion engines that were just as chic as they were moderately finished are long gone and the British-made limousines that are always worth seeing have also completely disappeared from the portfolio. The car manufacturer, which will be celebrating its 100th birthday next year, is sailing under the Chinese SAIC flag ((Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation) after its revival and has been extremely successful, especially in Europe. The marketing effort is manageable, because apart from a few spots on the Internet and Films on the information screens, for example at Munich Airport, MG is still holding back with big campaigns. No big announcements, but almost first the products and then people talk about them – that’s MG, especially on the two core markets in Germany and Great Britain. The customer seems to like it.
MG – Morris Garages – was once a traditional British manufacturer – for decades with manageable economic success. Today, MG Motor is one of the largest automobile manufacturers in China. SAIC Motor has been manufacturing vehicles from Volkswagen and General Motors in large joint ventures in China since the mid-1980s. Most recently, 5.3 million vehicles produced by SAIC were sold per year, 2.8 million of which were own brands such as MG or Roewe or the commercial vehicle manufacturer Maxus. This made the group of companies the largest automobile manufacturer in China in 2022 for the 17th time in a row.
MG is particularly popular among SAIC’s own brands – especially in Europe. The middle-class SUV of the type Marvel R brought a respectable success, with the MG5 came an inexpensive family station wagon, which was created from a combustion engine – but the 4.28 meter long MG4 in particular is a big hit for the SAIC subsidiary, because of the compact electric model does not have to hide behind an expected volume model like the VW ID3. Success comes slowly and steadily. While there were hardly more than 3,200 MG registrations in Germany in 2021, a year later there were already over 15,600 – an impressive increase of almost 400 percent. This resulted in a market share of still manageable 0.6 percent. MG is largely electric – almost 56 percent of the models had an electric drive and 41 percent were plug-in hybrids.
The figures from the first half of 2023 are also promising. 9,400 vehicles sold are again an increase of more than 120 percent. More than 60 percent of new MG registrations are electric, and above all the compact MG4 (5,088 vehicles), which can hardly overplay similarities with the VW ID3 in terms of proportions and dimensions. The MG ZS EV, EHS and MG Electric models took second and third place in the in-house MG garage. “The fact that we are the fastest growing brand in a highly competitive market like Germany in the first half of 2023 makes us very proud and shows us that we are on the right track with our purely electric vehicles and our growth strategy,” says Philipp Hempel , responsible for sales at MG Germany, Austria and Switzerland, “but we also know that we have to develop further and work hard to convince the demanding German customers.” MG does not forget to do something for its own image do. The best example is the Cyberster, an emotional fun roadster – electrically powered, of course. The 4.53 meter long two-seater will come as rear-wheel drive and all-wheel drive. The performance spectrum should be between 150 kW / 204 hp and 330 kW / 449 hp.
“We want to make a sports car that meets European tastes,” explains chief designer Carl Gotham. The final verdict came from the top. “When the CEO saw the car, the announcement came: ‘We’ll make it like this’,” says the designer. Like the MG4, the electric two-seater is based on SAIC’s MSP platform (Modular Scalable Platform), which enables wheelbases of between 2.65 and 3.1 meters. The Cyberster, weighing at least 1.8 tons, will cost around 56,000 euros next year on the occasion of the company’s 100th birthday and will also meet the expectations of European customers in terms of driving dynamics. The next joker is coming this year: the MG4 Xpower recently celebrated its premiere at the Festival of Speed. Unlike its direct opponent, the VW ID3, the MG4 Xpower will also be available as a 320 kW / 435 PS / 600 Nm all-wheel drive vehicle at the end of the year.
The MG sales figures in Europe look just as successful as in Germany. Here, too, MG was able to grow by more than 140 percent in the first half of 2023. As a result, the importance of the old continent in the internal group pecking order is increasing. If MG sold 660,000 vehicles worldwide last year, it was already 370,000 in the first six months of 2023. Foreign markets, and above all Europe, are becoming increasingly important for the Chinese SAIC Group. 1,010,000 vehicles exported in 2022 also mean an increase of more than 45 percent.
