Buy British! Fly the flag! MG is back, the 87-year-old true-Brit maker of sporting saloons and dropheads, founded by Cecil Kimber, is making cars again.
First, with this C-segment large hatchback, also available as a saloon, followed by the MG3, a small hatchback already on sale in China and then the MG5, a Focus-size hatch. There’s a new 1.9-litre diesel under development and even plans for a new small sports car. At the company’s Longbridge base 300 research and development engineers work under Briton David Lindley, there’s a design office with a team of 30 headed by Tony Williams-Kenny and 40 assembly staff fit engines and transmissions to the MG6.
Yet the standard we should be flying alongside the Union Flag is a red square with five stars on it, because MG is now owned by the Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation (SAIC), China’s largest car company.
How this came about is a sad reflection on the perfidy of the final days of MG/Rover. Nanjing and SAIC, the Chinese companies that bought production equipment and rights to old British names, could be excused for wanting little truck with the United Kingdom and it is to their credit that they combined resources and have continued to invest in Longbridge, albeit in a limited way.
But for all the design-and-engineering presence, this MG6 is no more a British car than a German-built Ford Focus, with an engine from Bridgend in Wales. The idea of a British mass-produced car is as defunct as a pair of plus fours (no, not Morgan’s). As Paul Everitt, chief executive of the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, points out, “the automotive industry is truly global these days and trying to reinvent the industry in the old way is not helpful”.
While the French and German economies have benefited hugely from their indigenous car makers in clawing themselves out of the recession, we simply don’t have a British-owned mass-production car maker any more and arguing about who’s to blame ain’t gonna bring it back. So we’re left with this, a Chinese-built, British designed and engineered hatch with vestigial final assembly in the UK. At least some of the high-value, intellectual operations are retained in Blighty.
At 15ft 8.8in, the MG6 is longer than a BMW 3-series and shorter than a Ford Mondeo, but it fits into that end of the market. With prices starting at £15,495, however, some customers will be looking at trading into more space for similar money from the Focus/Astra market.
The MG’s styling is superficially handsome and it looks a lot like the previous-model Renault Laguna. But up close, there’s a crude and unfinished quality to the exterior, with cheap black plastic inserts in the front grilles and wing flashes that don’t bear scrutiny. You can nitpick this to your heart’s content, but it’s well put together with no squeaks and rattles and the deficiencies are about conception, not production.
The top-model TSE comes pretty loaded, with air conditioning, cruise control, a colour satnav display screen, rear-parking camera, parking sensors and Bluetooth connections standard. Leather seats are electronically adjustable and there’s an in-car entertainment system and heater settings.
Climb in and the appearance is superficially classy, with accommodating seats, albeit trimmed in a sort of leather that smells of sawdust and feels like it came from space cows. There’s room enough for three six-footers in the rear and the 472-litre boot, although smaller than the Mondeo’s, is deep and wide enough for three or four big suitcases.
While the cabin seems well made, there’s a litany of small faults that add up to something less than the whole. So the unpleasantly hard plastic lower panels, the flimsy-feeling seat and ancillary controls and the highly reflective plastic screen over the instruments speak of a lack of refinement that leaves the MG trailing European, Japanese and even Korean rivals. The reverse-parking sensors, which keep beeping even with the ignition off, are plain annoying.
The only engine option is a heavily reworked version of the four-cylinder, K-series petrol complete with turbocharger, which takes the power and torque to 158bhp/159lb ft, giving respectable performance, but a less-than-stellar 35.6mpg in the Combined cycle – we struggled to better 28mpg.
A five-speed manual transmission drives the front wheels and the suspension is MacPherson struts front, with a Z-arm multilink system at the rear. The Rover K-series was a great engine when first introduced in 1988 and while this version feels dated compared with its latest twin-scroll turbo rivals, it is gutsy, if frantic at high revs.
The chassis is a sporty set up that rewards hard driving, with a finely worked gearchange, reasonably spaced ratios (it could use a sixth gear, though) and firmly weighted, hydraulically assisted steering, with good feedback to the steering wheel. Body roll is controlled and the MG corners flat and hard, with little tugging at the wheel when you accelerate.
The ride isn’t bad, either, although the wide Dunlops clatter fussily over broken surfaces and there’s a disconcerting double reaction from the rear end when you swerve across lanes at motorway speeds. The brakes are small and start to fade when used hard. While they are powerful enough in normal use, there’s a lack of bite on initial application.
In the end, it’s the lack of refinement that drags the MG6 down. The engineers and assembly workers have done a fine job, but better-sourced parts (particularly trim) would pay dividends. You need to understand clearly what you are buying with this MG6 and then you won’t be too disappointed.
What it does show, just as Kia and Hyundai have done, is that Far-Eastern cars are not far off the pace of the European non-premium market, but as we all know, it’s that final five per cent that takes 99 per cent of your effort and resources.
Will the Chinese do it? Who knows, but overactive parking beepers aside, the MG6 shows they are willing to give it a go.
THE FACTS
Tested: 1,796cc, four-cylinder turbocharged petrol, five-speed manual transmission, front-wheel drive
Price/on sale: Range starts at £15,495/now
Power/torque: 158bhp @ 5,500rpm/159lb ft @ 1,750rpm
Top speed: 120mph
Acceleration: 0-60mph in 8.4sec
Fuel economy: 35.6mpg (EU Combined)
CO2 emissions: 184g/km
VED band: I (£315 first year, £210 thereafter)
Verdict: Pretty good first attempt at a sporting family hatchback. Good to drive but let down by too many small design niggles
Telegraph rating: Three out of five stars
