MG Cyberster - long-term review - Report No:5 2025
Ford delivered a Kuga PHEV for a TopGear.com test in mid-March 2020. Over five years ago now – jeez. Doesn't time fly? I happened to take it home one evening.
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It sticks in my memory because it came just as Covid struck. The virus was already rife across Europe and was gaining blanket news coverage in Britain, but we didn't engage lockdown until mid-March. With the stay-at-home order in place, Ford couldn't collect their shiny new Kuga, so it also stayed at home. With me. For three months.
This was novel because I'd never lived with an electrified car for so long. 2020 was a different time – when EVs were rare, curious creatures. The Nissan Leaf, the Renault Zoe… that was about all you were likely to see whistling around on British roads.
It might've been the sheer tedium of no regular travel, but during my once-a-week government-mandated trip to the supermarket, the Kuga was a bit of a delight. I enjoyed whooshing about with the engine off, watching the engine mpg readout click upwards into infinity. I liked the sense of re-gen braking adding otherwise wasted energy back into the battery.
But most of all, I liked the reaction from other people to its peacefulness. Obviously it made the usual 'warp-hum' noises at parking speed to avoid smooshing absent-minded day-walkers in the Lidl car park. But – and perhaps this was the sense of comradery that came out of the pandemic – people seemed to appreciate this big lumbering family car moving about in such a quiet, non-polluting manner.
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Five years later, I'm living with a pure EV for the very first time. It's my daily-driver, my airport run shuttle, my commuter, my Sunday funster, the supermarket sweeper and a pain in the backside when I spy some do-uppable furniture on Facebook marketplace and can't collect it in a two-seater drop-top.
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