A Last Ditch Effort: MG Was Going Broke, So It Married Mustang V8 Muscle With Italian Supercar DNA

Before its modern transformation under SAIC, MG’s final act as an independent British carmaker wasn’t a practical hatchback or a budget EV—it was a full-blown V8 supercar. Facing financial collapse in the early 2000s, MG-Rover made a gloriously irrational gamble to remind the world of its performance roots. The result was the MG XPower SV: a carbon-bodied, Ford-powered curveball leveraging Italian supercar DNA in a desperate bid to save the brand.