Before the year’s end, we will see a revised 4, improved in function and materials quality along the lines of the recent, excellent S5 EV. And there will be another SUV, a size bigger than the S5. Even more new metal is due in 2026, but the UK takes only a fraction of the company’s global model line-up, so the Brit managers feel they have time to decide what comes next.
MG design: Shouting from the rooftop
MG’s British design studio is the only one I’ve ever visited that sits on the roof of an office building. It occupies the entire top floor of the company’s Marylebone headquarters, within sound and view of London’s buzzing traffic but insulated from both by its own calm, creative atmosphere.
Car companies have always liked to put designers where they can be influenced by the ebb and flow of modern humanity, and this seems the ultimate expression of it.
The studio and its shifting population of 30-odd occupants moved to London in 2019. Before that they were in Birmingham, in less salubrious conditions. Design director Carl Gotham remembers those days well. He joined MG in 2005, just before Nanjing merged with SAIC to form the current ownership structure, which over the years has done much to build MG’s modern era of success.
When Gotham joined, the major task was to create the first MG 3 supermini, a car that ploughed a long furrow in the market, having been launched in 2011, progressed through two facelifts (2013 and 2018) and then ending production in 2024 when supplanted by an all-new replacement. But MG Design’s most productive period began when it moved to Marylebone in 2019 and produced eye-catching models such as the 4 EV family hatchback and the Cyberster sports car, plus various supporting models, all with Gotham as director of advanced design.
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