MG Cyberster review

Throw forward to 2025, and those vehicles have really grown up. There’s a pipeline of sleek-looking MG SUVs charging into the market, including the IM6 (a Tesla Model Y lookalike) and MG U9 ute.

But the one that stands out from the crowd is the MG Cyberster – a convertible EV with scissor doors and a promise of blistering performance. People are really taking notice of this car, including me, and I reached out to MG to secure a test drive.

First impressions

MG set me up with a week with the Cyberster. Specifically, it was the AWD 375kW they loaned me – the one with both front and rear electric motors that markets for $130,000. I’ve never been more excited to test a car in my life!

Before jumping in, you need to admire this car from the outside. MG have nailed it – the Cyberster looks fantastic from all angles. My only gripe was with the ‘arrow’ indicators on the back – until I remembered you never see your car from the back while driving it.

I had already stood next to a Cyberster in a showroom earlier in the year and was prepared to have to reject it outright, because I didn’t think I could fit my 6′9″ frame into it.

Luckily, I was wrong. Contrary to MG’s rich history of producing tiny sports cars, the Cyberster is bigger than you’d expect. However, I did have to fold myself in after the self-opening scissor doors had done their thing. And once my very long legs were in place, it became clear I’d have to scootch down slightly to see out the front – and be wary of my knee hitting the seat controls on the door (that happened a few times).

The first impression you get sitting in the driver’s seat is of a fighter jet cockpit. You’re surrounded by screens. Two angled 7″ (around 18cm) ones either side of the main dashboard screen, and one down lower in the centre console.

These screens take some getting used to. The one on the centre console is the one you interact with to change various car settings, air-conditioning and the ‘MG Pilot’ driver monitoring suite. Top-left is navigation or phone projection, middle a classic dash. The screen on the right displays information menus, like a breakdown of your power consumption – I hardly used it. That screen also hosts the reversing camera, though, so it’s not totally obsolete.

The key takeaway for me was that the Cyberster was easy to use from the get-go. I didn’t need an extensive rundown on how to use things (although I have driven loads of MGs).

When you first take the Cyberster on the road, in ‘Comfort’ RWD mode, it feels much like any other EV. However, there’s an alluring red button on the steering wheel labelled ‘SUPER SPORT’. I pressed it (of course), and the car changed character immediately. In this mode, the throttle response is extremely sensitive, and the Cyberster accelerates like a rocket. The claimed 0-to-100 sprint is 3.2 seconds, and it feels like it.

When I came down from the high of the G-forces, I switch the mode back to comfort and went on my merry way. This was going to be a fun week!

Commuting and day-to-day living

I did feel slightly pretentious waiting for the scissor doors to automatically open before performing an ungraceful flop into the driver’s seat each morning and afternoon.

But scissor doors are undeniably cool. You press a button on the key and away they go – just don’t hit the wrong one because you look like a chump when the incorrect side opens. I quickly started acting like my doors were no big deal – extra cool points.

I did have one distinct anti-scissor door moment, though, when I returned to the car after watching my nephew play indoor cricket. It was hailing. I braved the stinging pellets and pressed the door button during my icy dash. Unfortunately, I timed it wrong and was too close to the sensors while the doors were still opening – they froze midway. I had to close then reopen them, all while getting soaked. To add insult to injury, my foot slipped as I finally dived in, and I smashed my shin.

That was the only time I thought the doors were stupid. Later that day, my ego was placated when a stranger at the shops commented “Sweet car, bro!”. All was well again.

In terms of day-to-day driving, the Cyberster performed better than expected. Comfort mode provides you with ‘just’ 250kW. That makes the MG more chill to drive around and easy to live with. It also wasn’t as low to the ground as I’d expected. Often in performance cars, you feel like your bum’s sitting on the road. In the Cyberster, you’re sitting on top of a battery pack so you’re more elevated.

The views still aren’t great, though – you are still in a low-slung convertible – and the small rear window in the cloth roof reduces visibility further. Parking is made easier with the 360° camera. I had no problems manoeuvring into parks over the week.

I can’t walk away from my time with the MG Cyberster without mentioning some downsides.

Firstly, the ‘Victory Grey’ Alcantara fabric on the seats showed the marks of 10,000 previous kilometres of journalist backsides. If they were all mine, I might ignore them – nevertheless, the fabric and its colour show a bit of dirt.

The software in the car also just feels like it was rushed out of production too soon. There’s some odd spelling on the dashboard – “Front Start” instead of “From start” for the trip computer and “Raeuperation” instead of “Recuperation” for the regenerative brake setting. The 360° camera didn’t start on one occasion. The one pedal driving system wouldn’t engage, no matter what battery level the car was at. Overall, it felt in desperate need of a software update.

You could overlook most of those things; they wouldn’t destroy your experience. What I couldn’t ignore was the driver monitoring and safety alerts – they were completely overbearing. Maybe it was my height, pushing the limits the system was capable of, but the Cyberster was constantly beeping to tell me off. That’s a modern car issue, but this one was especially judicious in handing out its beeping punishments.

Is it a daily driver? Probably not, purely because you can't really fit much in it. The boot is good for 250L, but really that’s only enough for some shopping or a couple of soft suitcases. There’s a cubby behind the seat, too, where I stored the charging cable.

Road trips

It might not be the best car for daily driving, but what two-door, two-seat performance car is?

Is it a fun weekend car? Oh yeah! It’s made for cruising. This is the happy place for the Cyberster.

I had the MG during the coldest week of the year. It was miserable and raining, so there was no top-down driving, which was a shame. With the roof up, I never felt cold once. The heated steering wheel and heated seats overcome everything. There’s a bit of noise from the cloth roof, but it has a couple of fabric layers affording it some insulation.

The cold weather did have a huge impact on the range expectations though. My less than 60km of commuting, followed by my 140km roadie, drained the battery from full to 8%. At one point, I thought I’d need to stop and recharge on the way from the Wairarapa home to Lower Hutt. Granted, I spent a good portion of the trip in ‘Sport’ mode, where both motors work to give me the full power on offer, but the trip computer clocked me using 26.5kWh/100km. That’s nowhere near the 19.1kWh claimed, and I managed not even half the 443km range claimed.

This underperformance doesn’t add enormously to the running cost; it just impacts on a road trip. I’d need to take the car during the summer to see if I could pin the reduction down to environmental factors or my driving style, or maybe the Cyberster just eats electrons with reckless abandon.

Once you’re on the road and turn up the tunes to drown out the driver aids, you’re in business. Driving over the Remutaka hill in treacherous conditions meant I never gave the car a proper go. I’m OK with that. You learn to respect the 375kW the Cyberster offers very early in your time with it. Plus, I don’t think I’m a good enough driver to wrangle the car either.

That doesn’t mean I didn’t have some fun when I could. Each time an overtaking opportunity presented, I could safely take it without the car breaking a sweat.

The suspension is surprisingly comfortable. You don’t feel every bump in your kidneys like other sports cars. Rather, the Cyberster has the feeling of a grand touring car, insulating you from the worst the road serves up. That might offend some people who take cars to track days, but most people will prefer it.

Accelerating at a great rate of knots is fun, especially when the car throws in a liberal dose of g-forces at the same time. MG have nailed that feeling. It’s intoxicating, and you want to do it again and again, then take your friends and family out to experience it, too. That’s what the open road is there for.

Final thoughts

I’m in two minds about the Cyberster. On the one hand, it’s amazing fun and extremely good-looking. Take it out for a spin and stomp on the accelerator, and you’ll put a big smile on your face.

Yet, on the other hand, part of me thinks it needs to be put back in the oven to bake a bit more. The driver aids are super annoying, and the car feels like it needs a good software update to remove some of its tech gremlins.

I wouldn’t tell my family and friends to part with $130,000 for it until MG sorts out those issues. They’re minor, but $130,000 is a chunk of cheese, and a customer deserves a flawless car for that. Once these are sorted though, go out and buy one if you can, it’s a hoot.