MG might be Chinese now, but it’s selling more cars in the UK than ever
MG is a sales hit, and Mike Rutherford thinks it won't be long before it overtakes Vauxhall, Ford and Merc to become the fifth best-selling brand in the UK
It’s been around for more than 100 years, has little ol’ MG. But the once British, now Chinese-owned firm says it’s selling more cars to buyers in the UK than ever. And an unusually large proportion of those vehicles are being purchased not by companies or rental firms, but by private individuals who enthusiastically buy into MG’s no-nonsense, take-it-or-leave-it sales pitch that speaks of advanced tech, outstanding value and, er, that’s about it.
We should never forget that at the start of the 2000s, Longbridge-based MG was something of a basket case: unloved, orphaned, loss-making, forced into administration, bereft of the relative glamour and sales successes of its former ‘superior’ (or maybe not?) family members, Jaguar and Land Rover.
Wind forward a couple of decades and MG began – and continues – to shift massively more new cars than those JLR marques combined. This was the case before and after the mothballing of Jaguar production facilities. And this is the way things will remain for the foreseeable future, because, even when the production lines restart, Jags will be built and sold in strictly limited volumes.
But MG is also way ahead of another former clan member, MINI. Put another way, in the first six months of this year, of all the British born-and-bred brands still going, MG sits very comfortably in second place, just behind Vauxhall. But not for much longer. This summer season, MG is already selling more cars than Vauxhall, and is therefore on course to take the undisputed No.1 slot by the end of the year, if not sooner.
More significantly and impressively, over the last 12 months (June ’25 to June ’26), MG has done the unthinkable by overtaking five major motor manufacturers from South Korea, France, the Czech Republic and Japan. Comparing the first half of 2025 with the same period this year, MGs sold better than Hyundais, Peugeots and Skodas. And despite the fact that MG no longer has a plant in the UK, it has also outsold Toyota and Nissan – who each have a factory in Blighty. Hmm!
The overall pecking order in Britain still has the Volkswagen brand at the top, followed by BMW, Kia, Audi, Ford, Mercedes, Vauxhall and MG, in that order. But as well as the inevitability of MG overtaking Vauxhall within months, I believe the Brit-turned-Chinese firm can and will soon catch up with and sail past Merc, too. After that, a sadly stagnant Ford (whose sales and market share are tumbling) is likely to be overhauled by a rampantly reinvigorated MG (whose order books and slice of the new-car pie are growing at an impressive rate, and sure to be helped by the MG2).
We’re only at the halfway stage of 2026, but if you forced me to nominate my car company of the year so far, I’d have to say MG. You got a problem with that?
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