Cyber attack

The Cyberster is the world's first accessible electric sports car, and it comes from... MG. And that’s not the most surprising thing about a brand that’s becoming an unexpected big-hitter

- JAMES TAYLOR

WHO SAW THIS COMING? NOT THE IDEA OF A MODERN MG two-seater sports car; that thought's been in every MG designer's sketchpad ever since the TF ended production in the early 2010s (and in a fair few non-MG designer's thoughts too).

But the fact that modern-era MG, almost out of nowhere, has become such a sales behemoth.

So far this year alone, MG Motor UK has registered nearly 26,000 cars, a 55 per cent increase on last year. Which was a 65 per cent increase on the year before. This amount of growth is unsustainable, commercial director Guy Pigounakis tells evo. 'Because if we continued at that rate we'd be the only people selling cars in the UK.

As it is, MG is the 11th best selling brand in the country, outselling the likes of Peugeot, Land Rover, Mazda and Honda, and with the potential to overhaul tenth-placed Mercedes by year's end. 'It's the fastest ever growth in the history of automotive Britain, Pigounakis says.

Those sales have been built on entirely worthy and competitively warrantied but bland and forgettable crossovers, hatches and estate cars, however; far removed from the roadsters, performance saloons

and hot hatches that have composed the majority of cars (good and bad) that the MG badge has been attached to during its 100 years.

That's about to change with the introduction of the MG Cyberster: an all-electric, two-seater roadster revealed as a concept car but confirmed for production next year. 'It's very close to the final design, says advanced design director Carl Gotham. 'It doesn't reference one particular sports car; MG is a lot of sports cars, and we want it to shift into this new era of electrification.