MG: The British Sports Car Name That Ended Up Under SAIC

MG grew out of Morris Garages in 1920s Oxford, where Cecil Kimber ran the tuning operation for William Morris before the brand became a carmaker in its own right. It made its name with compact open-top two-seaters — the MGA, MGB and Midget together accounted for more than 700,000 units built from the 1950s into the early 1980s.

The brand changed hands repeatedly: it was folded into BMC in 1952, which merged with Jaguar in 1966 and with Leyland in 1968; BMW bought MG in 1994, then passed it to MG Rover in 2000. After MG Rover went bust, Nanjing Automobile paid £53 million for the brand and its production assets in July 2005, and SAIC absorbed Nanjing in 2007, making MG a Shanghai-headquartered marque.

UK manufacturing at Longbridge ceased in 2016 following the Brexit referendum, and MG vehicles are now assembled in mainland China, Thailand, Indonesia, India and Pakistan. The current range covers SUVs such as the ZS, RX5, HS, One, Hector and Marvel R, the MG5, MG6 and MG7 sedans, the MG3 and MG4 EV hatchbacks, and the Cyberster electric roadster. The MG4 — first shown in China in 2022 as the Mulan — was the debut model on SAIC's dedicated EV platform.

In Taiwan, Yulon Group's China Motor has built and sold MG models under the "MG Taiwan" banner since 2022, starting with the HS petrol and plug-in hybrid, later adding the ZS and MG4, with a rebadged Maxus G50 Plus arriving in 2025.