00:00
Hi, I'm Alex, he's Jim, and this is the Charging Status EV Podcast.
00:10
How are you doing, Jim?
00:15
We've got an illustrious guest with us today.
00:17
We've got Mr David Allyson from MG.
00:20
David, you are correct me if I'm wrong, which I'm sure I am, head of product and planning.
00:31
What does that entail?
00:33
It is a very wide-ranging title to be perfectly honest, and I think that the best way I can
00:41
describe it is I am responsible for everything up to the point of when our cars effectively
00:50
reach the showrooms, so the specifications, the pricing, ultimately deciding what are the
00:58
right cars for us to bring into the market, I suppose is probably where we would start.
01:03
I also have responsibility for vehicle ordering, supply, onward delivery and distribution in
01:10
the UK, and I also do all the tactical campaigns in my spare time as well.
01:17
But you've got bags of that, I know.
01:21
A little dickie bird tells me you're also a fan of grass-roots football.
01:26
I am a season ticket holder at the National League North Champions, Bradley Town FC, so
01:33
we're now starting our campaign in the National League.
01:37
Two games in, one win, one defeat, so if I look forward to tomorrow's home game against
01:47
I'm an Everton fan, so you're probably used to a higher standard of football than I am
01:54
as an Everton fan, but it must be nice to see the game without the kind of negative
02:04
trappings of cash and actually just people enjoying football.
02:10
I think whatever level of football you follow, there's always an element of how much of an
02:19
impact finances actually make, and it's no different than on the league, but it's certainly
02:25
for me a much more enjoyable way of enjoying football, even going down to the way that
02:33
the players interact with the supporters and how the opposition supporters interact
02:39
with each other, which is different than we expected in the more professional element
02:47
So I think, like you're talking about the cars that have come to UK, I've just had
02:52
the S5 in for a new in the last sort of week, 10 days, and one of the things that
03:00
struck me about that is it seems fairly well suited to UK roads, and we've got
03:05
physical controls again, which is something that all of us, boring car review is
03:11
bleat on about all the time, is that we've gone too screen based with everything, and
03:15
it feels like people have been listening, and it's part of your role to kind of essentially
03:25
kind of lobby MG over in China to make some adjustments for UK or those kind of
03:33
adjustments done here, or is it just a happy accident that we've got cars that
03:37
feel like they're fairly well suited to our road?
03:40
It's very much the former.
03:42
I think the first point I would make is that MG is now solved.
03:49
It's probably over 115 countries around the world.
03:53
I mean, the brand is far bigger and far more successful than it's ever
03:59
been in its 101 year history now, but the UK is the biggest global
04:07
export market for MG.
04:10
It's the second biggest market overall behind China, but China market is 24 million
04:15
cars, so it's fairly large.
04:18
And because it is the spiritual home of the brand, we do have quite a lot of
04:24
influence in what goes on.
04:27
That's helped by the fact that we have the design studio here in the UK, which is
04:34
It's the floor above from where I'm sitting in our head office in London.
04:39
And then we still have an engineering facility at Longridge, and those guys
04:46
do an incredible amount of work honing the vehicles to ensure that they
04:52
are more suited, if you like, to the UK and European roads, which are very,
05:00
very different than what we see in China.
05:02
But the point you make about physical controls is very much a direct feedback
05:11
following previous cars that we've introduced.
05:14
So with the MTS5, we felt that we perhaps have gone up a little bit
05:21
too screen heavy on some of the previous cars that we launched.
05:24
We obviously read lots and lots of reviews, not just our own cars, but other
05:28
competitors' cars as well.
05:31
And we felt that it would be appropriate to look at, I suppose,
05:38
going back a step in some ways.
05:41
So there are physical controls for the audio, physical controls for the HVAC.
05:47
And it makes an enormous amount of difference.
05:50
And those are things that we'll see more of on cars in the future.
05:56
And just take a little step back, like all three of us,
06:00
well, me and Jim, we're massively into cars because we review
06:04
cars on a daily basis, a weekly basis and that sort of thing.
06:07
What's kind of your background?
06:09
How did you sort of get into working for MG in the UK?
06:13
Be quite interested to hear about that.
06:15
Well, I've only ever worked in the motor industry.
06:20
So on September the 1st, which is just over a week away,
06:26
it'll be my 20th, well, it will be 2025, so it'll be 26 years
06:31
to the base since I started in the motor industry.
06:36
I've always been, always been into cars.
06:39
My dad was was in the motor industry,
06:42
doing cars and then in trucks for all of his career.
06:44
So it was the only thing I was ever really going to do.
06:48
But my roles, I've kind of had opportunities
06:54
on both sides of the fence.
06:56
So I started off in retail, so I started off working in dealerships.
07:01
So my very, very first job in a dealership was answering phones
07:04
in the service department and doing service bookings
07:07
and did lots and lots of roles, mainly in showrooms, selling cars,
07:12
which I think if anyone is ever going to work in this industry,
07:17
you can't really have a better experience
07:20
than doing it at the sharp end, so to speak.
07:25
But, but, laterally, more involved in the OEM side of things,
07:31
the manufacturing side of things.
07:32
So prior to coming into MG, which again,
07:36
it's nearly my fifth year anniversary,
07:38
so I started in September 2020.
07:41
Previous to that was at 10 years at Highamdi,
07:44
where I did various roles across planning,
07:47
across product and head of sales operations as well.
07:51
So to really, I suppose, my roles here at MG
07:55
are almost a combination of the three major jobs
07:58
that I did at Highamdi, but yeah,
08:01
they're entirely motor trade based.
08:03
I will only ever work in the motor trade
08:05
to see anything I'm interested in.
08:07
And to be honest, I really wouldn't want to do anything else.
08:14
Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it?
08:15
I come from a completely different background.
08:17
I've been doing this for like four years or something now,
08:20
but I come from a very sort of corporate background.
08:23
And I'm now in that boat where I think,
08:27
yeah, I'd never do anything else.
08:30
And Alex has one foot in each,
08:33
but it's interesting because all these people
08:35
from different backgrounds sort of come together
08:37
and at heart we're all car people,
08:39
so we all kind of speak the same language
08:41
and yeah, I just think it's the most exciting time
08:47
to be involved in doing what we're doing.
08:49
I mean, you've got the kind of EV haters,
08:53
the fossil fuel haters, these full-blooded arguments
08:57
that go on between everyone,
08:59
but I just think that we haven't seen this
09:01
kind of change in the industry since
09:05
the horse and cart sort of moved on.
09:07
And it's a great time to be here.
09:10
And I think MG is a really interesting one
09:12
because a lot of people consider,
09:14
I think if you stopped a lot of people in the street
09:16
and said, what's MG?
09:17
They'd probably say it's an EV brand.
09:19
And I think that's testament to the massive success
09:23
you've had in the EV space.
09:24
And you certainly haven't had probably some of the issues
09:26
with the mandate that some of the other brands have,
09:30
but obviously you do everything.
09:34
Yeah, I think you're right.
09:36
I think we probably re-established ourselves more
09:43
with the advent of EVs
09:45
because MG wanted, had been acquired by PsycMotor
09:53
and started selling cars again in the UK.
09:57
We'd do anything, but probably a dozen years or so
10:02
until the first generation ZSCV came out in 2019.
10:06
And that's when EVs were really kind of starting to wake up.
10:12
The market share of an EV in 2019 was still probably
10:15
only one or two percent, it was microscopic.
10:19
And at that point, there really wasn't an awful lot out there
10:23
that was affordable.
10:25
It was very much the domain of the earlier adopters,
10:27
the ones that had significant amounts of money,
10:32
the ability to charge at home
10:33
and all that kind of good stuff.
10:35
But ZSCV came along at a point where, you know,
10:39
EV car grants were A there and B quite generous.
10:44
And it meant that people that wanted something
10:48
could actually have thought it.
10:51
So that was probably the car from an EV point of view
10:56
that I suppose made people wake up to the fact
10:59
that MG was here and it actually had
11:01
a credible product to offer.
11:02
And I think, again, up to that point,
11:04
it probably didn't across any individual power train.
11:10
And then it started to gather momentum more
11:15
with the MG5, which was one of the very few
11:21
and still one of the very few EV state cars
11:25
that was available.
11:28
The second generation ZSCV that came along,
11:30
but the thing that really changed,
11:32
it was a course MG4, which came out in 2022,
11:38
towards the end of 2022, in fact,
11:39
almost exactly three years ago.
11:42
And we're now looking at probably 45, 46,000 cars
11:47
on the roads later.
11:48
It's been an absolutely phenomenal success story
11:53
And yeah, that's probably been the car
11:57
without a shadow of a doubt that really reestablished us.
12:01
And certainly a car that nobody really saw coming.
12:08
So yeah, that's very, very briefly the synopsis
12:13
that's kind of close to the point of where we are today.
12:18
And I think what the MG4 did was probably draw a little line
12:25
under the fact that you asked the MG
12:26
because you had something that was actually
12:28
handled really well.
12:30
And it was a bit more fun at the time
12:34
than a lot of the other cars sort of in that,
12:37
certainly around that price point,
12:39
there were lots of good, sensible EVs,
12:42
but it sort of had a bit of a smirk and said,
12:46
come on then, that gives a push on the B roads
12:49
and things rather than just,
12:50
I'm really fast in a straight line.
12:53
And obviously that continued with the Cyborster,
12:57
which I'm guessing you were part of the reason
13:02
we got the Cyborster, were you?
13:05
Well, yeah, I mean, you know, Cyborster was a product
13:10
that actually started here, you know, in London
13:16
as a bit of a kind of after-hours project, if you like,
13:22
up in the design studio and go way back
13:25
with the 2017, 2018.
13:28
And those guys, as an advance design studio,
13:31
so very much looking into the future,
13:33
very much looking at the future trends, you know,
13:35
what is the market going to be wanting in five, 10 years time
13:39
as opposed to the next couple of years?
13:41
But they were really keen on developing something
13:49
as part of the 100 year anniversary,
13:52
which was over 2020, 2020 and 2024.
13:54
So, you know, they were already looking five or six years ahead
13:57
and saying, what could we do to mark that?
14:01
Of course, being British, you know, being part of the UK,
14:05
their view was they really wanted to do something sporty,
14:10
something convertible.
14:12
And it was always considered as an electric car,
14:16
you know, there was never a case of saying,
14:17
well, let's develop something, let's take a VA
14:20
in front of it, it was like, no,
14:22
the EV is actually the most important part
14:25
of the project and the platform
14:29
and the way that the weight distribution works,
14:32
actually, it suits a convertible really, really well.
14:36
So, their ambition, if you like,
14:42
was really important in order to get this project
14:46
And it took a long time for it to actually happen
14:49
because of course you had COVID right in the middle of it.
14:52
Probably in all honesty, it was like a lot of the cars,
14:55
they were probably delayed by a good year or 18 months
14:58
just purely because of the pandemic.
15:01
And a lot of cars probably never even saw the light of day
15:06
because of all of the pain and suffering
15:08
that companies had to go through during the pandemic.
15:11
It was probably a case of in many circumstances,
15:15
well, let's just strike that one off
15:17
or cross that one off because we can't afford to do it
15:19
because of this, that and the other.
15:21
But luckily, we were able to keep that project going
15:26
and it was from memory, the Shanghai Motor Show of 2021
15:30
where the chairman at the time saw what was at that point,
15:34
the concept and effectively said, let's do it.
15:38
It was very much a case of that.
15:43
And then by 2024, I think maybe on now, yeah,
15:48
it would have been 2023 where the first,
15:52
the car was first shown,
15:53
so we first showed the car at Goodwood in 2023.
15:57
And then, yeah, we're pretty much a year on now
16:00
from when the first cars hit the road.
16:02
So it's been a long time to get it there,
16:05
but it's been an absolutely fascinating journey
16:10
in order to actually do something.
16:12
And something that was bringing in the visa market
16:16
is purely there for design
16:20
and purely there for driving pleasure.
16:22
It's something that I've never been involved in before.
16:25
I remember doing the media presentation
16:28
and it got about two thirds of the way through
16:30
before I even started talking about range
16:32
and battery capacity, no one really cared about it.
16:35
It was very much about,
16:36
this is a car that people want to buy
16:39
and people want to enjoy driving
16:40
and people want to enjoy looking at
16:42
and that's exactly what it does.
16:45
Yeah, which is a brilliant thing
16:47
and I've said it on other shows and stuff,
16:50
but keeping the car enthusiasts engaged
16:54
and not just us having a sea of things
16:58
that make great financial sense
16:59
and they're cheap to run or good for the environment
17:05
Coming up with progressive stuff
17:06
that actually keeps car people engaged,
17:09
I think is very important.
17:11
And I think, I mean, we've seen it now
17:13
with the Renault 5.
17:15
There are lots of people that I'd never, ever have an EV
17:17
and they see images of that
17:19
and they're like, well, actually, that looks quite nice.
17:22
And I think that's the thing that will
17:26
allow more people to have pleasant conversations around
17:30
cars and fuel sources and things in future
17:33
rather than it being sort of us and them,
17:37
this kind of tribal mentality that happens at times
17:41
which upsets me greatly.
17:46
Sorry, there's no question there, it's just like
17:49
I've just gone off on one again as I do.
17:52
Alex, ask a question.
17:56
Yeah, based on the thing that Jim was saying a minute ago,
17:59
MG's got both, well, it's got hybrids, petrol cars and EVs.
18:05
How do you think that MG has sort of done better
18:08
than other brands in terms of that the ZEV mandate,
18:11
for example, because a lot of other brands
18:14
are struggling a little bit.
18:17
If you know what I mean, not riding it that well,
18:20
how do you think MG have navigated that?
18:22
Do you know what, it's actually quite interesting
18:26
because we've actually started to reduce
18:31
the proportion of EVs that we've been selling
18:36
as an overall mix of the cars that we have been selling
18:39
particularly because we've grown so much.
18:41
So if you looked at the last year
18:46
before the ZEV mandate came in,
18:50
our EV mix was 39%, but it was only 27% last year.
18:56
And again, it's because we've actually
19:00
got quite a broad church of powertrains that we offer.
19:05
So it's not just combustion engine, it's hybrid,
19:08
it's plug-in hybrid, and of course, EV as well.
19:11
And that's probably been one of the reasons
19:14
why we have enjoyed a lot of volume success
19:18
over the last three or four years.
19:20
It's because we do offer everything,
19:21
it's because we're not necessarily pigeonholed
19:25
for want of a better word in one particular powertrain,
19:29
whether or not it's just purely combustion engine
19:31
or whether or not it's just purely electric.
19:35
But of course, the other thing that sometimes
19:38
doesn't get missed as far as the ZEV mandate is concerned
19:42
is that there's lots of nuances to it.
19:44
So you don't necessarily have to achieve
19:48
the actual threshold of electric car volume
19:52
if you demonstrate a considerable improvement
19:55
in terms of your overall CO2 averages.
19:58
And that's really important for us
20:00
because one of the things that we did do
20:02
and one of the decisions that I was directly involved in
20:06
and we took probably two or three years ago now
20:09
was to jump directly from combustion engine to hybrid
20:13
and kind of miss out the mild hybrid bit in the middle.
20:17
And that's been really, really important.
20:19
So if you look at some of the cars
20:21
that we were selling even last year
20:24
and the cars that we're selling today,
20:26
the difference in terms of their CO2 performance is huge.
20:32
And that's really helped us
20:34
in terms of hitting our ZEV mandate target
20:36
without necessarily having to get
20:40
to the actual individual thresholds.
20:42
But because our MG3 hybrid, because our ZS hybrid,
20:46
because our HS hybrid, our HS plug-in hybrid
20:49
are miles better than their predecessors
20:52
because we've gone from combustion engine to hybrid,
20:55
it means that we don't necessarily have to achieve.
20:58
Of course, that's what we're aiming to do
20:59
but we don't necessarily have to achieve
21:02
the actual ZEV target in order to remain compliant.
21:08
And like that, I think that's,
21:11
it's one of the things that does get a little bit missed
21:15
because people are very, very focused on the industry,
21:17
must be at 24% last year,
21:19
must be at 28% this year, must be at 33% next year.
21:23
Actually, that's not the case if you can demonstrate
21:27
or if you're in the position like we are
21:29
to be able to demonstrate a considerable CO2
21:31
improvement based on your 20 to 21 feet average.
21:39
Can I, I've got a bone to pick, basically,
21:43
but it does lead on to a question.
21:45
I really liked the MG5.
21:48
And it was the only affordable EV estate car, pretty much,
21:54
and you can't get one anymore.
21:56
As that ship sailed, does nobody buy estate cars anymore?
22:01
And the second part to this is at Geneva last year
22:04
where we saw some IM cars,
22:07
and we'll talk about IM in a sec,
22:09
we also had the MG7 and the MG9,
22:11
which I thought were pretty fab,
22:13
but, you know, big saloon cars.
22:15
Again, are we just not buying them in the UK
22:19
because everyone's giving us SUVs
22:24
and very few are giving us alternatives.
22:27
I think that there's all this talk,
22:29
isn't there, about, you know,
22:31
people don't want to buy manual cars anymore,
22:34
or people don't want to buy convertibles anymore,
22:36
which to some extent is true,
22:39
but to a large extent isn't,
22:41
because not many people make manual cars anymore,
22:44
and very, very few manufacturers
22:45
actually make convertibles anymore.
22:48
So ultimately, I suppose,
22:49
what people can choose is ultimately dictated by,
22:53
by what's on offer.
22:56
And because so much of the combustion engine
22:59
in space is now directed towards hybrids,
23:02
for all the reasons I was talking about just now,
23:04
from a CO2 point of view,
23:07
then they are automatic transmissions.
23:09
They can't be manual transmissions by definition.
23:14
And lots and lots of segments
23:16
have just kind of disappeared.
23:18
If you think about how many, you know,
23:20
convertibles you were able to get
23:22
sort of 15, 20 years ago,
23:24
when we went through that period
23:25
where sort of hard to top convertibles,
23:28
so per-show 308 cc's and focus cc's and stuff like that,
23:32
just didn't exist any up to that day.
23:36
Why that is, I actually have no idea,
23:42
but going back to the state car thing,
23:45
I think when it was,
23:49
when it was decided,
23:51
and this was before my time to be fair,
23:54
that something like an MG5 could work in this market,
23:57
it was again, because there was so little of anything
24:02
that you could buy in that EV space that was affordable
24:06
and within the vast sort of pantheon
24:09
of sites product portfolio,
24:12
it was a case of, right, this car could actually work.
24:14
You know, you go to China,
24:15
they're absolutely everywhere, those types of cars,
24:18
and they did a combustion engine version as well.
24:23
And I think that when we were selling it
24:25
and selling it really successfully,
24:27
our view was, do you know what?
24:30
Maybe there is room in the market for a state electric car,
24:37
which was fine until MG4 came out.
24:40
And when MG4 came out and it was more efficient,
24:45
it was cheaper, it was much better to drive,
24:47
not the MG5 was a good to drive, it was absolutely fine.
24:51
To some extent, people stopped buying it
24:54
because it really wasn't about,
24:55
it was more about affordability
24:58
than the fact that it was in the state car.
24:59
That's really what it came down to.
25:05
So I think if we were to say, right, clean sheet of paper,
25:10
what is the kind of, the next two or three cars
25:15
that we might be looking at or gaps in the market
25:18
or niches that we don't currently occupy?
25:24
the state car probably wouldn't be in there.
25:30
Okay, I'm not surprised.
25:35
But it is, yeah, I always have these kind of thoughts.
25:40
Does nobody buy this anymore
25:41
because there aren't any to buy
25:43
because it does make it difficult.
25:46
But then you wonder why there aren't any to buy,
25:48
perhaps nobody bought the ones that were available to buy.
25:54
And the big saloons, I guess,
25:56
I know like the MG7, MG9 are probably purely
25:59
for Chinese market, I guess.
26:02
And again, is that,
26:04
do we see any future for those kind of vehicles in the UK?
26:09
I mean, I drove an MG7 in China,
26:12
two-litre turbo, nine-speed automatic, lovely,
26:16
made a great noise, completely infractical
26:20
and would never sell,
26:22
even though it's lovely to drive
26:23
and really lovely to look at,
26:25
but nobody would buy it, so it doesn't work out.
26:28
But they will buy an IM.
26:32
We hope so, yeah, because why would we be doing that?
26:34
We weren't confident that the people were gonna buy it.
26:37
And the difference purely comes down to the power trade.
26:42
You know, it is strange, isn't it?
26:44
How, and we've found this when I was at Highland,
26:49
how much EV democratizes brand,
26:54
you know, the kind of very traditional market
26:57
that was entirely dominated by German brands.
27:00
You know, the reason why Ford stopped doing them on the AIs
27:03
and Foxhall stopped doing insignias
27:06
was because people just bought three-series
27:09
and A4s and C-classes.
27:13
But all of a sudden, EV comes along
27:15
and people I think are more willing to try different brands
27:20
and they're willing to accept unfamiliar brands as well
27:26
when it comes to needs of technology.
27:29
And that's a real big departure
27:31
for what is traditionally quite a,
27:33
well, quite a traditional industry, isn't it?
27:37
And this is definitely where, you know,
27:41
lots of new brands coming into this market
27:44
have been able to take advantage of those sort of trends
27:49
or those mentalities, if you like.
27:51
But that's quite willing to accept spending,
27:55
you know, 30, 40, 50, 60,000 pounds, whatever it might be,
27:58
on something that might not necessarily
28:01
have a German badge on the front of it.
28:06
Yeah, we first saw, I am a good word,
28:08
which was last month, wasn't it?
28:11
Yeah, time goes very quickly at the moment.
28:13
We saw your presentation.
28:14
I remember it well.
28:17
Yeah, I remember it well.
28:20
Yeah, I spent a good amount of time on the MG stand
28:24
just filming bits and pieces
28:25
and the amount of interest in those two cars was immense.
28:31
Just the people flocking, people looking inside it.
28:33
I could barely get anywhere near it, to be honest,
28:35
So what's been the reaction to that new,
28:40
those two new cars?
28:40
Because it's kind, it is a sub-brand in China,
28:43
but it's kind of sort of a different model line-up
28:47
in the UK, isn't it?
28:48
It's a little bit different.
28:51
So you're quite right.
28:54
It's a sub-brand in China,
28:56
but where it's being sold internationally,
28:59
it's being sold through the established MG network,
29:03
which is far bigger and far more influential,
29:09
if you like, in some of those export markets.
29:14
The UK being a classic example.
29:18
And I suppose we felt that if we were gonna have
29:22
the best opportunity with it,
29:24
we've got a ready-made dealer network of 155 dealers
29:27
that are really good at selling electric cars.
29:31
And it's an area of the market
29:32
that we don't currently operate in.
29:35
No one that's gonna buy an MG IM,
29:38
I think we'd probably consider buying an MG4,
29:41
maybe they would, but they probably don't.
29:44
So we're not really trading on anyone's toes.
29:47
And we're giving ourselves an ideal network,
29:49
like a really, really amazing opportunity
29:51
to go into a different space and say,
29:56
here is an amazing car, a five-meter car,
29:58
a 4.9-meter car with huge amounts of power,
30:02
amazing levels of technology for what is still
30:07
in the true MG fashion,
30:09
an extremely good value-for-money opportunity.
30:14
So I think that the reaction, Alex,
30:17
that you saw was something that very much we saw as well.
30:23
Nobody really saw it coming.
30:25
We're quite good at keeping things a secret
30:28
and doing things very much at the last minute.
30:32
And taking people by surprise.
30:33
We did it with MG4,
30:35
and Cybers are less so,
30:36
because obviously it was quite a long gestation
30:38
in terms of bringing the car out.
30:40
But I think with this product,
30:43
it's like, I would say it's really taken
30:46
lots and lots of people by surprise.
30:49
Within a couple of weeks,
30:53
people will be able to start seeing them in showrooms
30:55
because we're getting pretty close now
30:56
to starting being able to deliver them.
31:01
I think your fleet sales guys,
31:03
people selling into fleet must be absolutely
31:06
licking their lips at the moment
31:07
because it just feels like the thing
31:11
they've been waiting for has just arrived.
31:13
Yeah. I mean, we are extraordinarily good
31:18
at selling electric cars to private retail customers.
31:22
In fact, outside of Tesla,
31:23
we've sold more electric cars to private retail customers
31:26
than any brand since 2019.
31:29
So we occupy this space that's kind of,
31:32
I don't know, 20,000 to 30,000 pounds.
31:36
We have that to ourselves, actually,
31:37
for probably a couple of years over the last,
31:40
certainly over the last 12 to 18 months,
31:43
everyone has been coming into that space.
31:45
So it's become harder without shadow of a doubt.
31:47
The competition is getting better and more numerous
31:50
in terms of the choice of great consumers.
31:54
So it makes even more sense to my mind
31:59
that we branch out into an era
32:01
of the marketplace that we're currently not represented in
32:04
and actually aren't particularly good at selling into it
32:09
because the corporate customer that buys a car
32:12
through salary sacrifice,
32:13
buys a car through a benefit and kind
32:15
and can actually have access
32:17
to some pretty serious pieces of machinery
32:22
but not a huge amount of money
32:24
in terms of certainly, in terms of a monthly tax bill.
32:29
So with this kind of car,
32:32
this gives us an opportunity to compete with the cars
32:37
which occupy those price points
32:40
and offers the same levels of technology.
32:44
Yeah, it looks very, very interesting.
32:48
I've reserved a space on the drive for one of those.
32:52
So yeah, let Richard know that I need to be near the top
32:58
of the list, please.
32:59
Don't worry, there's not a lot to demand out there, Jim,
33:02
but I'm sure we'll have actual funds for you.
33:05
Yeah, yeah, no, I can only imagine, I can only imagine.
33:11
Well, I think we've held you for long enough
33:16
and it's time for you to take your freedom
33:18
but thanks very much for joining us, David.
33:20
It's an absolute pleasure.
33:23
Actually, one final thing.
33:26
it was over something that looked very much like a cyber stir
33:30
but didn't necessarily have a soft top.
33:34
What would have happened then?
33:36
That may have been a roadster.
33:44
And lying me further, go on, look after him.
33:46
It was, so it was in December,
33:49
somewhere off the A34, other people were there.
33:52
It's not sinister as it may sound.
33:56
And I think he had a cyber stir and a roadster
34:01
and I think the roadster was the only one in the UK.
34:05
They basically very much had the look of a hard top cyber stir.
34:09
OK, so we're talking about the cyber GTS, I think, aren't we?
34:13
The cyber GTS, there we go.
34:16
Yes, so that is something that we showed
34:19
at last year's Goodwoods and it's actually downstairs.
34:22
It's in the showroom in our London head office
34:27
alongside the other car that we had at Goodwood last year,
34:30
which was the EX-E181, which was the homage to the land speed
34:35
record cars of the 1950s that were driven by Phil Hill
34:39
and Sterling Moss, but yes, they are pretty spectacular
34:45
looking and certainly the cyber GTS was a car that captured
34:50
a lot of people's imagination when we showed it last year.
34:55
I think your question to me is probably going to be along the lines
34:58
of if and when or what, like when.
35:04
I wouldn't I wouldn't be so bold, but now you mentioned it.
35:07
You'll forgive me if my official call for answer is
35:10
that officially it's still a concept.
35:13
Yeah. And my my electric or petrol head
35:18
or whichever way you want to you want to look at it says,
35:21
would I love to do it? Absolutely.
35:23
I think it would be a fantastic addition to the range.
35:26
You look back in the history, the original MGB
35:32
was came out as a roadster to start off with,
35:35
and then it was joined by the hatchback or the coupé,
35:40
if you like, whichever way it is, you want to look at it.
35:44
Those types of cars, it's always the hard top
35:48
that outsells the convertible practicality reasons,
35:53
if nothing else, I think it would be great.
35:56
I think it would work really, really well.
35:58
But at the moment, I'm still waiting for the final confirmation
36:02
as to when we do it or if we do it.
36:06
Yeah, yeah. No, it's a great looking thing.
36:09
And it's always kind of stuck in my mind.
36:12
So, yeah, I'd be very interested to see one of those on the road.
36:17
Right, we are going to wrap it up this time.
36:20
Alex, take his help.
36:23
Thank you so much for your time, David.
36:25
It's been really, really good to chat to you
36:26
and learn about your history and what you're doing as well.
36:29
And obviously, I am stuff that's coming pretty soon.
36:33
Where can people find more about you
36:35
if you've got some online presence?
36:37
Well, you'll find my name
36:40
and lots of quotations pretty much everywhere, really.
36:45
So I quite often have a look at myself.
36:49
But yeah, I have a LinkedIn page.
36:51
If anyone wants to let me up on LinkedIn.
36:53
And in most recent editions of your popular automated publications,
36:58
you'll find many, many quotes from me
37:01
or interviews and stuff like that.
37:03
So I'm out there somewhere.
37:07
Yeah, you can find this podcast in video on YouTube,
37:10
in audio on Spotify and Apple podcast and that sort of stuff there.
37:15
Where can people find you online, Jim?
37:17
Notaguru.co.uk or my website.
37:20
My that is my website, my YouTube channel,
37:22
which is definitely not a guru.
37:25
You can find my website, the interface.uk
37:27
and all my car reviews over on YouTube, the interface cars.
37:31
Again, thank you so much, David, for your time.
37:33
And we'll see you again next week.
37:35
You're welcome. Thanks for the opportunity.