Automotive Business Magazine – Q2 2026 – Digital edition - Magazine - Page 29
Levraging
heritage: MG is
finding balance
between the
future and past
of automotive
Pigounakis thinks that MG could grow
its performance car offering further,
adding: “I would like to see a proper
XPower sub-brand developed. Now,
would it have to be as extreme as XPower
used to be?
“I was directly involved in the old
XPower. One of the cars we had on stand
at the Birmingham Motorshow was the
chief executive's car at the time. It was
in that chroma-flair colour and it had a
Sean Hyland built supercharged V8 with
nitrous that had about 1,200 horsepower
under the bonnet.
“That's a perfect example of the point
that you shouldn’t build cars just because
you like them. Especially when you
haven't got enough money. Build cars
that people actually want to buy.
“That whole V8 Rover programme
was great. I had one as a company car.
They sounded fantastic because it was
a V8, it was a Mustang engine. But no
one wanted to buy one. It was a typical
example of corporate vanity.”
Pigounakis believes that there is an
opportunity for MG to use its heritage
more. So far, it has looked mainly to the
future, building tech-focused cars. He
believes that it can play on the heritage,
but it should not lose focus.
Pigounakis concludes: “The thing for
us to start thinking about now at MG is
how we start leveraging the heritage a bit
more.
“It's a bit of a balance. You don't want
to be stuck in the past when you're
building high tech vehicles.
“I've been involved with MG directly
since 1995, when I worked for Rover
group and it was building MG versions
of cars. I was responsible for the MG
F programme, so I have this huge
emotional tie to MG.
“Post 2020, being MG helped us
massively with dealers, because the
familiarity was there, the affection was
there.
“We want to embrace it. We're very
proud of it and everybody that works
here loves it. We've got to be careful that
we don't overestimate its value to the
general consumer, just because it means
a lot to us.”
Q1 2026
Q2
AUTOMOTIVE BUSINESS
71
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