MG

That changed after MG Rover, the company’s last British owner, collapsed in 2005. Nanjing Automobile Corporation bought the MG brand, the Longbridge factory and its tooling for around £53 million, beating a rival bid from a larger Chinese firm called SAIC Motor. Two years later, in December 2007, Nanjing itself merged into SAIC, which meant SAIC ended up with the MG name anyway. In 2009 the UK sales arm was renamed MG Motor UK Limited, and production briefly continued at Longbridge until 2016, when SAIC moved all vehicle assembly to its factories in China.

Today MG is owned outright by SAIC Motor, a Chinese state owned car manufacturer headquartered in Shanghai. SAIC is one of China’s largest automotive groups, and MG operates as one of its main passenger car brands alongside Roewe and Maxus. MG Motor UK still keeps a design and engineering base connected to the old Longbridge site, tuning suspension and styling details for European roads, but almost every car sold under the MG badge is built in China, at SAIC’s own plants. SAIC has also set up assembly operations abroad to serve nearby markets more efficiently, including Thailand, India, Indonesia, and Pakistan, and the company has said it wants to build a factory in Europe too, with sites in Hungary and Spain both mentioned as possibilities.

MG has grown very quickly outside China over the last several years. Overseas sales passed a million cars a year in 2023, making it the highest volume Chinese car brand sold internationally, and the company has said it wants to reach 1.2 million vehicles built worldwide annually. In the UK specifically, MG was one of the fastest growing brands through the early 2020s, helped along by a wider dealer network and a run of new electric models, and by 2025 MG had been named Best Manufacturer at the Autocar Awards for its combination of affordability and design.

MG’s current lineup mixes petrol, hybrid and fully electric models. The MG3 is a small hatchback available with a self charging Hybrid+ powertrain. The MG4 EV is MG’s ground up electric hatchback and has been one of its most successful models, credited with a lot of the brand’s recent growth. The MG5 is sold as a fully electric estate car in some markets, a rare thing in a segment most manufacturers have abandoned. The MG HS is the brand’s family SUV, offered with petrol, self charging hybrid, and plug in hybrid options. The MG ZS, MG’s other SUV, has traditionally been sold with electric and petrol versions side by side, and the electric ZS EV has recently been replaced in most markets by a new model called the MG S5 EV, built on the same underpinnings as the MG4. There is also the MG Cyberster, a two seat electric roadster marking a deliberate return to MG’s sports car roots, and the newer IM5 and IM6, a more premium pair of electric models aimed at a different part of the market entirely.

From a small British sports car maker to one of the most exported Chinese owned brands on the planet, MG’s story is a genuinely unusual one, built on a name that outlasted the company that originally created it.