Shanghai show: MG’s iconic octagon goes soft

THE iconic 90-year-old octagonal MG badge could be in for a makeover if the Shanghai-based passenger car design director for MG’s Chinese parent company, SAIC Motor, gets his way.

Shao Jingfeng, an 18-year veteran of SAIC Design, wants to soften the corners of the badge to maker it look “less angry”.

He said he had taken the liberty of including such a modified badge on his new MG sports coupe concept, the all-electric E-motion, at the Shanghai motor show to test consumer reaction.

While the core of the badge is still octagonal, it has more rounded points and is surrounded by a white round LED ring of light.

It is also flatter than previous MG badges to overcome what Mr Jingfeng describes as “the big protruding nose” on the front of the car.

“I want to make it a little smooth – not too much,” he said, asking journalists not to make too much of the change as “it is only a marketing test on a concept car”.

The octagonal badge has been a fixture on MG cars since 1927, just a few years after the company was established in the UK in 1924, although it has gone through a number of evolutions.

At one time, it was a red shield, and at others it was a simple black and white outline.

After striking financial difficulty in the early part of this century, MG and its Rover partner were acquired by China’s Nanjing Motors which later merged with Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation (SAIC).

Mr Jingfeng said that from a designer’s point of view, one of the problems of the current badge is that it has too many hard lines pointing in too many directions.

He said it was difficult to accommodate these lines into car grille design.