Petrol vs electric: can the MG Cyberster displace the BMW Z4?

While up close it may be rather obvious that the two-seat, droptop MG hasn’t come straight from Sant’Agata, from a distance it is easy to mistake the Cyberster for a car that costs well into six figures. Just look at those scissor doors. Inca Yellow paint – an old British Leyland colour and now a £695 option – certainly helps.

The weather is in a typically British mood, and while the MG’s doors may look dramatic, they’re not exactly the most practical. They’re electronically operated and a little on the slow side if you’re waiting in the rain. Plus, on the way back down they conspire to pour water onto the sills and over the carpets.

Photography: Huckleberry Mountain

Still, British sports cars have never been perfectly practical, and we’re ready to forgive a few foibles because the all-electric Cyberster is a properly good looking thing no matter if the roof is up or down. The long bonnet and broad shoulders give it a traditional roadster shape, but the funky union jack style LED rear lights are your first hint that this is anything but a classic sports car.

Speaking of the classic sports car recipe, BMW has recently been busy making its straight six engined, rear-wheel-drive G29 generation Z4 even more nostalgic with the addition of a manual gearbox. Clearly the industry is split on what customers actually want from their roadsters. So, which is better? It’s time for a classic old school vs new school ding-dong.

The Handschalter Pack (that’s ‘manual switch’ in German before you start getting any rude ideas) is technically an optional extra for the Z4 M40i but tick the £5,325 box on the configurator and, as well as a six-speed box, you’re also forced into having a tan leather interior, Frozen Deep Green paint and red brake calipers. Yep, it’s essentially a special edition with just one spec available. We’re not complaining.

And just as Toyota vastly improved the sibling Supra with a manual a couple of years ago, the Z4 suits a self-shifter perfectly. BMW claims the gearbox itself was developed exclusively for this car, but it also admits that it’s a “modular transmission that incorporates M-specific components” and a quick bit of research reveals the gear ratios are exactly the same as on the Supra and the manual M2.

It’s not actually the greatest manual shift – the lever itself is well positioned and the throw is nice and short, but there’s that slight rubbery feel that plagues most DIY BMWs and the pedals are offset to the right. And yet, it makes the Z4 so much more engaging compared with the standard eight-speed auto. It slows down your progress, rev matches for you on downshifts and allows you to connect with the car like you couldn’t with an auto Z4.

It also means you’ll use more of the revs and work the engine harder. And what an engine. The turbocharged 3.0-litre B58 makes a silky smooth 335bhp with peak power coming between 5,000rpm and its 6,500rpm red line. The Handschalter retains the full 369lb ft of torque too and only gives away a 10th of a second to the auto in the 0–62mph sprint. It doesn’t have the motorsport-spec chunter of a Porsche flat six, but it’s properly muscular and yet still managed 32.8mpg on the day of this shoot.

Clearly the MG’s electric motors aren’t going to match the character of a BMW straight six, but what the Cyberster lacks in noise, it more than makes up for in power. The standard Cyberster Trophy (£54,980) uses a single motor, rear-wheel-drive setup with exactly the same power output as the Z4 (335bhp), but the BMW costs over £60k with the Handschalter Pack fitted, so for similar money you could upgrade to the twin motor Cyberster GT that we have here. The result is 496bhp, 535lb ft of torque, four-wheel drive and a 0–62mph time of just 3.3 seconds.

Click the bright red Super Sport button on the steering wheel to activate Track mode, switch the traction control off and activate the launch control. Mash the throttle, let go of the brake and there’s a little bit of slip as the front wheels try to find some grip on damp tarmac, but almost immediately it’s gathered up and you’re being fired down the road. It’s one heck of a party trick, particularly when you’re exposed to the elements with the roof down.

Comfort and Sport modes actually dial back the power delivery for smoother progress, with the latter probably the sweet spot. The modes won’t change the suspension though – unlike in the Z4 it’s a passive setup with a double wishbone front and multi-link at the rear. MG says that the Cyberster underwent an “extensive 18 month performance and handling development programme” that was directed by its Longbridge (yes, really) engineering team, but it’s clear this was designed to be more of a GT than an out and out sports car.

Even so, the body control needs work. The suspension and dampers are strangely soft and the Cyberster struggles to contain its near two tonnes of weight, bouncing down a bumpy B-road with huge speed but never able to properly settle. It rolls through corners and does without fancy torque vectoring. The steering doesn’t offer much feel and the brake pedal is overly light at the top of its travel, although once you get through the initial dead zone there is decent feel.

Oh, and see those paddles behind the steering wheel? If not for simulated gearshifts, you might expect the left paddle would offer more regen braking and the right paddle would wind it back to offer a bit more driver engagement. I certainly thought that would be the case, and it took me longer than I’d care to admit to realise that the left paddle was cycling through different levels of regen and the right paddle was changing the drive mode. Slightly strange.

The MG’s lack of composure is made more obvious by jumping into the Z4. With the addition of the Handschalter Pack, BMW also retuned the adaptive dampers, fitted a reinforced anti-roll bar clamp up front, added bespoke auxiliary springs all round, and refined the steering, traction control and the M Sport rear diff. The goal was apparently to “achieve sharper handling characteristics that will be appreciated by driving purists” and there’s no doubt this is the best G29 yet.

Where the Cyberster feels floaty and disconnected, the Z4 controls its rebound without being overly firm and gives you the confidence to drive it harder. With 50:50 weight distribution and power being sent to the (now larger) rear wheels it’s a more natural roadster experience. The steering is perhaps a little artificially weighty in Sport mode, but you can knock that back in Individual while keeping the engine in its most free breathing configuration. You can also switch off the rev matching here if you’re after some heel ’n’ toe action.

Plus, despite being the old school contender in this test, the Z4’s interior is actually the nicer place to be. You sit low to the ground, the leather feels premium and surprisingly the manual gearlever doesn’t look like too much of an afterthought. Proper buttons on the dash and steering wheel too – hurrah!

MG has had a good crack at injecting some drama into the Cyberster’s interior and it does look and feel very impressive with faux leather, genuine Alcantara and a Bose stereo, but the underfloor battery means you sit far too high and four screens really is information overload. The McLaren style portrait central screen functions well to control climate and other driver settings, but the two seven-inch touchscreens that flank the 10.25in dial display are almost completely obstructed by the steering wheel. Not ideal when you’ve got your navigation or phone mirroring up there.

There are some confusing layout choices too: the doors are controlled by a switch on the centre console, the speed limit warning is buried in submenus and the right-hand touchscreen defaults to showing you the weather forecast. Useful in a roadster, we suppose. At least you can actually use the cupholders in the MG though – in the Z4 you’ll need to leave the centre console lid open, but that will obstruct your gearchanges. Maybe it was a bit of an afterthought after all. 

The Bavarians have turned the Z4 into a proper sports car

Still, the Z4 wins the retracting roof drag race, with its speedy 10-second operation beating the 15 seconds of the Cyberster (both work up to around 30mph). It has a slightly larger boot than its new age rival too, although it’s the MG that’s more refined with the fabric top in place. Obviously the lack of engine noise helps in that regard, but there’s also less road and wind noise transmitted into the cabin and the Cyberster is a decent companion on a motorway slog.

Given that we managed an easy 3.2 miles per kWh, it should get fairly close to its claimed WLTP range of 276 miles too. When you do need to stop it’ll rapid charge at speeds of up to 144kW, meaning a 10 to 80 per cent top up in 38 minutes.

As expected though, it’s the BMW that comes out on top in this comparison. With chassis tweaks and the addition of a manual gearbox, the Bavarians have turned the Z4 into a proper sports car that costs less than a four cylinder Porsche Boxster. The Cyberster might not suit anyone above 6ft tall and struggles a little dynamically, but there’s no denying that it’s an interesting proposition.

And MG has beaten everyone, including Porsche with its forthcoming Boxster, to the punch with an electric roadster. One that’s handsome, deeply rapid and has supercar doors. Now let’s see if there’s demand out there for it.