► MG reveals Cyber GTS prototype
► A hardtop Cyberster that will likely make production
► Prototype took on the hill at Goodwood FoS 2024
MG revealed the Cyber GTS concept at the 2024 Goodwood Festival of Speed – but we’ve not seen or heard anything about it since then. That’s why I asked MG UK’s head of product planning David Allison, about the hardtop counterpart to the Cyberster going to production. Can you blame me?
‘If you look at that type of car and you and you look at the cars that have a convertible and a coupe body style in the same range, the coupe always sells far more than the convertible,’ he told me at the reveal of the new MGS 5 EV.
‘I think if it was something that we wanted to do to try and sell a few more cars, then it would be the obvious next step, if you like, for that car, but it’s not in the portfolio plan right now.’
So, not the best news. MG is still not confirming the Cyber GTS, but it’s a viable product commercial. MG has always maintained the Cyberster is about brand-building and excitement more than sales, with the current car pushing just over 300 sales since its release in September 2024.
‘From a pure sales point of view, it’s not important at all,’ said Allison. ‘It’s just for a brand like ours that has 100 years worth of history, I’ve always felt that’s something we should be celebrating. It just gives us that, that little bit of point of difference that some of the new brands coming from China can’t do – we can do stuff like that.’
But the Cyber GTS would have the nod from the brand marketing bods and the bean counters too. What’s the hold up MG?
Keep reading for everything else you need to know about the Cyber GTS.
Cyber GTS: what you need to know
MG is very keen to point out that this is still just a concept – even if the brand is taking a prototype model up the famous hillclimb during the Festival of Speed.
‘We are trying to bring the MG brand more into the future,’ said SAIC Global Design Vice President, Jozef Kaban (pictured above, left). ‘You can’t just make retro cars, copy or improve them – you have to always define something new.’
Even so, MG is keen to impress some of its now 100-year history a little more than it has before during its time as a brand under the Chinese SAIC automotive giant. So much so that the Cyber GTS is designed to be a nod to the MGC GTS Sebring – a racing car that took on the 12 Hours of Sebring in 1968 and achieved MG’s highest ever factory result.
The Cyber GTS sits low to the ground, with its stretching bonnet and bluff rear end. Plenty of the Cyberster’s design cues have been carried over, with MG’s team saying the platform underpinning its electric roadster is capable of having a hardtop model, too.
In fact, unlike the Cyberster, the Cyber GTS concept is defined as a 2+2. ‘And it is a real 2+2,’ says Carl Gotham, MG’s Advanced Design Director who’s also responsible for crafting the wild EXE181 show car. ‘There is a package there, and the study is there – it’s not just for show.’
And, given it’s defined as a concept car, the Cyber GTS is shown just as an exterior model and without any performance specifications. MG’s team say the fooprint hasn’t changed, although the GTS stands a little taller, implying that – if it were to make production – it would likely be offered with the Cyberster’s 335bhp single rear e-motor or the high-performance 503bhp twin-motor setup.
Even so, MG also reminded us that it would be 60 years of the MGB GT in 2025, which would be an apt time to unveil a new coupe sports car.