The MG Cyberster Focus Group

A month ago I was invited to be a part of a focus group for a new car launch in India. As with these new car focus groups, there is a lot of secrecy around who is running the event or what car is being previewed or revealed.

The last time I was part of one of these dog and pony shows I was living in Los Angeles and I was invited to critique the yet to be launched Audi R8. The Audi R8 was officially launched in 2006.

They spent A LOT of time having me look at that section behind the door and talked me through various color options. And mind you, I only got to see that middle section everything else was hidden. I found it funny they were so focused on that area, until the R8 was launched. Then it became apparent since that unique design behind the door was one of the main talking points of the car.

This time when I was invited to the Nehru Center in Worli to preview a car, I knew the model they were audience testing the minute I saw it. I laughed out loud and said “oh, it’s the MG Cyberster”. The guy that was asking me all the questions, looked a bit startled. The other cars they were benchmarking against were the Kia EV6, Mini Cooper and BMW Z4.

The reason I was selected was because I own a Kia EV6 and I’m sure they were thinking, we need to understand the mindset of these twisted blokes that blow upwards of Rs. 65 lakhs on a Korean car when you could buy other cars with more badge recognition.

The MG Cyberster will be the “halo car” of the newly created JSW-MG Motor India partnership. This is the first big partnership for an Indian company to partner with a Chinese passenger vehicle company and they want to pull out all the stops to make it super successful. And thus they spent money on the focus group to learn more from Indian consumers on what they thought of the vehicles overall looks, price, features, etc…

I spent close to 4 hours with the team and I can say only a true car person could endure this entire process. They asked the same question in multiple ways to make sure my response was consistent. The truth is, I loved the whole process and would love to do more of these.

Overall, I like the car but I do find the back of the vehicle a bit gimmicky with the turn signal arrows and the name “Cyberster” doesn’t do much for me. The car does have two party tricks, one is the performance of 0 to 100 km/h in 3.2 seconds and the other is it’s Lamborghini-style scissor doors. If they price this car around Rs. 60-70 lakhs, it will definitely do well as a halo car for the brand and hopefully push them into Tier 2 cities as well.