2023-11-29 22:36:52
It’s been a long time, but there was a time when the British car brand MG had a loyal fan base in Europe and the USA. In the 1960s and 1970s, the stylish yet affordable sports convertibles were well received by customers who wanted to drive a special car that not everyone had. In particular, the successful model MG B, which was built almost unchanged on the outside over two decades, was a bestseller. But then followed a long and sad decline that MG shared with numerous other British car manufacturers.
Marcus Theurer
Editor in the economy of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.
But today, half a century later, the brand is suddenly back on the streets. With respectable sales figures in registration statistics in Germany and other European countries, MG has experienced an amazing resurgence – as a manufacturer of electric cars. In the first ten months of 2023, a good 17,000 MG cars were newly registered in Germany, a growth of more than three quarters compared to the same period last year. In relation to the overall market, this is still not much, but it is still much more than some other import brands such as Alfa Romeo and Honda achieve in this country.
MG’s Britishness is carefully maintained. The brand presents new models at the Goodwood Festival of Speed, a traditional English meeting of car enthusiasts on the English Channel. When it comes to the color of their new car, MG customers can choose between paint colors with names like “Dover White” or “Brighton Blue”.
But despite the decidedly English appearance: In reality, the comeback of the traditional brand is a Chinese work. MG is part of the Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation (SAIC), one of the leading state-owned car companies in China. The English brand came into the possession of SAIC via a detour and after bankruptcy. MG had previously belonged to BMW for a long time as part of the English Rover Group. But for Bavaria, the investment in Great Britain was a billion-dollar flop.
Today there is Chinese technology beneath the sheet metal of the MG cars. The vehicles are no longer manufactured in Longbridge near Birmingham, England, as they once were, but in a high-tech factory in the city of Ningde in southeast China.
It is precisely this combination of English brand flair and Chinese electric car know-how that seems to be MG’s formula for success in Germany and other European countries – or as Jan Oehmicke, the manufacturer’s German managing director, puts it: “the mix of rationality and emotion”. If you look at it soberly, the price-performance ratio that MG offers is quite decent: in comparison tests, the all-electric compact model MG4 performs reasonably well, but is significantly cheaper than, for example, the comparable electric Golf ID.3 from Volkswagen. It pays off: No other manufacturer from China sells as many electric cars in Europe as MG.
This text comes from the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.
The push by China’s powerful electric car industry into the European market was one of the big topics in the auto industry this year. In Germany, a number of Chinese manufacturers such as BYD, Lynk & Co and Great Wall brought their cars onto the market for the first time in 2023. BYD and other companies from the Asian country were also represented with some large stands at the IAA automobile trade fair in Munich. But no Chinese provider has been as successful in Europe as SAIC with the supposedly British brand MG.
Technically, the car brands from China with their electric models are more than just competitive. The Asian country is not only by far the world’s largest car market, but also the global lead market for electromobility. Number one there is the Chinese manufacturer BYD, which in October sold more electric cars globally for the first time than the previous world market leader Tesla.
“Customers don’t associate MG and Polestar with China”
But in Europe the Chinese obviously have an image problem. In any case, the cars from China that are selling best in European countries are those that are not perceived by customers as Chinese. This applies not only to MG, but also to the number two Chinese manufacturer in Europe: Polestar is a new brand created six years ago by the Swedish manufacturer Volvo, which in turn belongs to the Chinese car group Geely.
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