MG Cyberster first drive

The MG Cyberster has scissor doors like a Lamborghini. With a claimed 0-100kmph time, the 2-door convertible EV has acceleration to match the 5.2-litre V10 of the Lamborghini Huracan Tecnica. And at ₹75 lakh nothing comes even remotely close to the performance of this electric car. We spent a short morning at the BIC getting to grips with the second car that will be sold out of the new MG Select showrooms.

Lambo doors on MG Cyberster

Yes, they are gimmicky as hell. Yes, shrinking-violet-types would be mortified if asked to alight out of these doors. But this is not a car targeted at the shy-and-retiring types, and the spectacle of those doors is undeniably one hell of a head turner. It’s also practical. These doors are electrically operated, they have a proximity sensor so you don’t get whacked by the scissoring doors, and there are not one but three buttons to make it easy to open and close while both outside and inside the car. Lambo doors at ₹75 lakh! Nothing this side of a crore of rupees, maybe even a crore and a half, will get you as noticed as when alighting out of the Cyberster. That said, each to their own as far as styling opinions go. I’m not much of a fan, particularly those arrows on the tail lights, but the fact that this was designed at SAIC’s London and not Shanghai studio means there isn’t overt ritz-and-glitz. Particularly so on the inside.

Well resolved cabin of MG Cyberster

You do, of course, get screens. But this isn’t a gigantic TV stuck on the inside. You get three small screens arranged in a wrap-around fashion around the driver, digital cluster in the centre flanked by infotainment / Apple CarPlay / Android Auto on the left, and a plethora of menu settings on the right including the display for the rear view camera. On the centre console you have another screen with an even more exhaustive array of settings to play with, flanked by a physical drive mode selector on the right, haptic controls for the air-con above it, and physical buttons for activating the doors and roof below it. It works. Nicely. Save for the fact that the steering wheel partially obstructs the driver’s view of both the left and right screens. The seats are surprisingly comfortable.

Drop the fabric roof, it takes 10 seconds, and visibility improves immeasurably. Best part, you can get in and out of the car rather elegantly – anybody who has had to contort themselves getting in out of an Aventador or Murcielago will thank the heavens. As will their mini-skirt wearing companion. That’s because you sit much higher up than you would expect – or even like – because of the batteries under the floor. The 77kWh battery pack uses SAIC’s ultra-thin battery cell design that has a height of just 110mm, but every gramme and every millimetre has a disproportionate effect on a sports car. Every fraction of a second too, but that’s where the strengths of an EV lie.

MG Cyberster accelerates to 100kmph like the McLaren F1

The Cyberster’s steering wheel has a big, unmissable button, begging – just begging – to be punched in the face. I punch it. That’s super sport mode. Somebody in the pits has turned on the sound generator and turned up the volume to the max (yup, you can even adjust the volume of the fake sounds) so that I get the full force of the accelerative impact. Brake torque it, or whatever the right terminology for left-foot-on-brake, right-on-the-gas in the EV-world is. The revs on the dial leap to 5500rpm. Erm, what? Revs?

In super sport mode you get a simulation of a rev counter on the display which is marked to 7000rpm, and when you launch the needle holds at 5500rpm and then swings all the way to the end of the dial, to where 10,000rpm would have been marked were the designers not embarrassed by the fakery and stopped the numbering at 7000. But I don’t notice any of it. 503bhp and 725Nm of torque fed to a motor on each axle and sent to tarmac via P Zeros makes for violent acceleration. I yell an expletive. And before I can think of one more, we have sailed well past 100kmph. 3.2 seconds to 100kmph was what the McLaren F1 did – admittedly way back then, but to use a more modern analogy that’s the best the 5.2-litre V10 in the Huracan Tecnica could manage. This is very, very fast. And there’s some sounds blasting through the speakers which, frankly, I didn’t get enough time to process.

Meanwhile the Cyberster is relentless in its pursuit of speed. No times are given for the 0-160kmph sprint but I suspect that’d be dispatched in under 8 seconds. It’s only after 180kmph that the rate of acceleration starts to taper off but then we are over the crest at BIC’s back straight and aided by the downward slope we get to an indicated 210kmph on the clock. And that’s where the instructor screams at me to slow down, slow down.

Handling of the MG Cyberster

Do the brakes get fried after a lap of the BIC? I unfortunately cannot tell you because we didn’t really get the opportunity for flying laps. I can tell you that the brakes are strong and don’t feel lacking in any way except for maybe a bit of feel and feedback. As for outright cornering, I pretended my helmet had ear-defenders to drown out the instructor and thus, am at your service. Fair warning, the Cyberster is no lithe, lean, compact sports car. At 4.5 meters in length, this is longer than a Creta. At 2690mm it has an 80mm longer wheelbase than said Creta. And at 1.9 tonnes, this weighs as much as one and a half Cretas. Properly heavy in other words.

Of course, all this weight is nice and low, the tyres are sticky P Zeros, there is all-wheel-drive, and an EV can meter out and monitor the power delivery 100 times better than an ICE. That means, once settled into a corner, it can pull fairly serious g-forces. To give you some reference, at the second of the twin-apex parabola of the BIC, I was doing 120kmph with the tyres howling away to glory and the car accelerating hard. Cornering speeds then, sorted. Cornering agility on the other hand, that’s where you pay that weight penalty. You can’t chuck it into the corner, let the tail come round, apply a sliver of opposite lock, adjust the cornering attitude on the throttle, or exit in a beautifully controlled drift. Playfulness, that’s not its forte.

On the autocross track with MG Cyberster

Post our three tracks laps we were chaperoned to the BIC support paddock where an autocross track was laid out for us, which only confirmed our initial findings. Outright grip? No problem. Agility and quick direction changes? Not its forte. The steering too, not exactly brimming with feel. The autocross laps also gave us the opportunity to drive without a helmet and with the roof down – the latter making a dramatic difference to the sense of airiness. I know that statement sounds stupid, of course dropping the top on a convertible will make it seem more airy, but I was not expecting such a dramatic transformation. It is almost like the Cyberster was designed without the top and then the roof was sketched in. It’s not a criticism; it’s an observation.

Oh, I also did something naughty. Conned the instructor into hunting for my spectacle case while I figured out how to turn off ESP. After all they had a figure-of-8 lined up and what’s the point of driving it with ESP cutting in – which it does, very aggressively. First the car understeers heavily, with ESP on there’s no kicking out the tail even moderately, and then ESP just slams the power shut. Things do improve with ESP switched off. On the autocross track you can get some power oversteer to get the tail out and straighten out the corner, but it’s not as predictable or consistent as you’d expect from a sporty car.

On the figure-of-8, every time I booted the throttle the Cyberster would just understeer, and then you keep the steering lock wound on, keep the throttle pressed, and eventually the rear tyres would start to over-rotate. One time I got some oversteer. The next time I tried to replicate it for the camera and the inside rear wheel lit up, spinning loudly, smokily, and dramatically but without anything in the way of proper sideways action. The lack of a limited-slip differential being an obvious reason. Anyways, all the smoke and noise immediately brought out the fun-police and ESP went back on and I was thrown out of the car.

Cyberster will be better on road than on track

On track we only got efficiency of 2.36km/kWh, but that’s to be expected if all we are doing are full-send runs. On the road, with a claimed 580km MIDC range and 443km WLTP range, the 77kWh battery pack should get you something like 380-400km. Which is plenty enough for a Sunday drive, or the Saturday crawl to the nightclub. As for how it will behave on the road, these observations are based purely on conjecture, overlaid with some amount of acquired-over-the-years experience.

Chuck the Cyberster into the BIC parabola and you can feel the softness in the suspension. Ride it over the kerb aggressively and you can feel the compliance. These are all undesirable traits on track, especially one as smooth and bump-free as the BIC. But on the road? You will appreciate it. You will also appreciate what looks like good ground clearance, though how it will go over speed breakers with that long wheelbase is something we will have to test. But right time, right place – the hills in the monsoons, drop the top after a short and sharp shower, the sun still behind the clouds, the air pregnant with the scent of the rains, temperatures in the gorgeous twenties, your partner beside you who hasn’t abused you while trying to get in – the Cyberster will be a joy.

The MG Cybster is more a GT than a sports car, better suited to Delhi – Agra than swinging a hard left off the expressway and attacking the BIC. Which, again, is no criticism. You are more likely to spend time in the hills or on expressways than on race tracks. Purists will say this is no sports car, and for them there’s everything from the Golf GTI to the upcoming Octy RS and the fan-favourite BMW M340i to keep them entertained. The Cyberster opens up a whole new segment, especially in the Indian context with our Indian roads and the (lack of) options we have in terms of a car like this. Lambo doors. Lambo-go. Even (sorta) Lambo-show. All at ₹75 lakh. Being an EV, you don’t add much more in terms of taxes. And the running costs of an EV are next to nothing. I cannot stress the value proposition enough. In the right context and environment, the MG Cyberster make a convincing case for those dreaming about a Lambo.