Clarkson's review of the MG6

[xm607]

Hi,
In the Drive supplement of the Sunday Times Jeremy Clarkson does a review of the MG6, or rather takes it apart, must be a disturbing read for any one concerned with MG at the moment. With the MG3 coming up they must give one to Top Gear to review and not hold back like it appears in the article, I have had a lot of time for what he has to say in the past but MG must do better than this.
Steve.

[MaddAussie]

This might have something to do with it...

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/je ... op-1881557

[redbeard57]

A rather disappointing review, very negative comments and in many ways unfair comments about lack of headroom and quality of plastics let it down. Comments about "kung fu" drinks holders which "throw your drink over your passenger as it opens" are simply inaccurate....how do you get your drink in the holder BEFORE it is open!! Ok, the car broke down on Clarkson while he was driving it, or did it? Ok, he had to push it at one point, but was that just part of the act? Those of us who drive a 6 regularly know what to do on a stall....take the key out and push it back in with the clutch down, but had anyone told Clarkson that? He got a test drive via the back door as he says phone calls were not returned and the "time was never right" for an official test run, so we don't know where he got the car from, presumably a local dealer who should get a severe kicking from MG for letting Clarkson out with one. But wouldn't it have been better PR for MG to give Clarkson a fully prepared checked over 6 as we all knew before Clarkson got in the car what the write up was going to say.......

[Martin_Bmth]

I read the review and the mg6 didnt fair well, but you've got to accept Clarkeson likes to hype up the controversial and whatever gets a laugh. The MG6 has hidden itself in what i would consider one of the toughest sectors of the car market and morphed into a generic hatch thats using a MG badge to try and promote itself as attractive to the british market. The mid range hatchback market that Rover couldnt compete in with many years experience so why the chinese try to emulate that seems a bit bonkers.

He's unfortunately right in the fact its a car made in China, assembled in the UK and chinese quality is somehow different to what we get from the flawless european and japanese manufacturers.

Redbeards comment reminds me of another article in the same supplement which talks about buying a british sports car and the rituals you have to adopt to start a car.

A real MG bid for survival in my opinion would be if the bloke who owned the shed next door to Lotus in Norfolk bought the tooling and produced little pretty 2 seater mgf sports cars with some of the wrinkles ironed out like subframes that didnt rust out in days and could be dropped out for engine maintenance in minutes rather than hours and price them so cheap theyre irresistable. Being made in Britain gives a sports car the right to be eccentric. Just my opinion.

[Hainsie]

That man has no interest in anything less than £100k that relates to what most ordinary people consider to be motoring.

I am an MG6 owner and wouldn't hesitate to recommend one to anyone..... unless you have £100k to spend or your name is Clarkson.

[Rich in Vancouver]

I have to say I don't value Clarkson's opinion on cars. It's all shtick.
He is entertaining on TV at times but I wouldn't pay good money for a Top Gear rag
when there are quality car magazines available.

[MGF74]

The 53-year-old looked a bit sheepish as he and a pal had to push the MG6 past chuckling onlookers

hm... he's only 53??

He could pass for late 60s. Age has not been kind to that face.


About the MG6... sorry if I am being a heretic here, I just googled pictures of it... to me that's an entirely unremarkable car which I would probably have trouble telling apart from a Prius or a Hyundai I30 in the street. It appears to be just another permutation of dime-a-dozen modern-day car design.

As far as recognizability and character, I think it simply hasn't got anything that an "F" has. Quite faceless, and as I said, it looks entirely unremarkable.

[colintf]

The 53-year-old looked a bit sheepish as he and a pal had to push the MG6 past chuckling onlookers

hm... he's only 53??

He could pass for late 60s. Age has not been kind to that face.


About the MG6... sorry if I am being a heretic here, I just googled pictures of it... to me that's an entirely unremarkable car which I would probably have trouble telling apart from a Prius or a Hyundai I30 in the street. It appears to be just another permutation of dime-a-dozen modern-day car design.

As far as recognizability and character, I think it simply hasn't got anything that an "F" has. Quite faceless, and as I said, it looks entirely unremarkable.

Drive one, see how well it handles, it's an MG for sure

[Stan_B]

Now I know that Clarkson hates them MG6s suddenly look a lot more attractive.

[Hainsie]

Just bought my second, a diesel this time, with a few extras:

[colintf]

good on ya Steve

will be interested in regular feedback as to what its like

[Rob Bell]

Is there a link to the original article? I've still not read it.

I've noticed that our local MG dealer no longer is an MG dealer Silverstone may be the only place I'll get to see an MG6 or "new" MG3

[xm607]

Here it is-

According to the promotional material, the MG6 was conceived, designed, engineered and built in Britain. It’s a great British name, and a great British car. A slice of Jerusalem among the dark, satanic mills of Germanic nonsense. A UKIP pin-up girl with windscreen wipers. Brown beer with a tax disc.

This is a car for people who grew up dreaming of driving a sporty B but who are now to be found at home, in their wing-backs, flicking through the channels and muttering about how there’s nothing to watch on television these days. It’s a car that takes them back to their youth. A car that reminds them that Britain was, and still is, the greatest country on earth. It’s the Spitfire, the hovercraft and Nelson. It’s Churchill. It’s Elgar. It’s Wordsworth and Shakespeare and Brunel.

Except it isn’t. Because it turns out that the MG6 is actually built in China by SAIC Motor — the company that now owns MG Rover (though not the name Rover). It is then shipped over to Birmingham, where a small team inserts the engine. Claiming that this car is British is like claiming that an Airfix model was built in your front room. It wasn’t. It was merely assembled there.

Yes, the car we buy here was styled in Britain, and some of the chassis work was done here too, with — whisper it — German components. But in essence, while this car may be pretending to be Kenneth More, it’s as Chinese as a chopstick.

This is not necessarily a bad thing. Because, typically, what happens when a Far Eastern country starts exporting cars to the West is: you get a substandard product with a price that’s so low, no one really cares that it’s held together with wallpaper paste and has an engine that sounds as if it’s running on gravel.

Then, in an alarmingly short time, the cars are suddenly as good as their European rivals. Toyota went from the Toyopet to the Lexus LFA in about five weeks. One minute Kia was making the woefully awful Rio, and the next it had the bloody good Cee’d.

The company behind the MG6 started with an advantage. It didn’t begin with a jungle clearing and a workforce that thought it was making dragons: it began with the underpinnings of the Rover 75 and employed people who navigated to work with their iPhone 5. In theory, then, the MG6 would drive quite well and come with a DFS everything-must-go price tag. Which would make it a tempting proposition even without the nonsensical Last Night of the Proms-style marketing.

So why, I wondered, was it so hard to book a test drive? Excuses were always made. Other phones were ringing. Other priorities had to be addressed.

Well, last week I sneaked behind the wheel for a short drive, and very quickly the reason became obvious. This car is not bad at all. It’s hysterically terrible.

Let’s start with the ignition key. You know those cheap electronic toys that you buy children from the gift shop on a cross-Channel ferry? Well, this has the quality of the wrapping in which they are sold. And naturally it didn’t work.

I learnt this outside the police station in Ladbroke Grove in west London. The traffic lights went green and I set off. But I didn’t because the car stalled and it would not restart. So I pushed it to the side of the road, where after several attempts the diesel engine finally clattered into life.



At the next set of lights exactly the same thing happened again. And so at the third set I made sure it didn’t stall by summoning 3,000 revs and setting off nice and gently. This made the whole of Notting Hill smell of frazzled clutch.

There are some other interesting faults as well. This is not a small car. It’s a little larger than a Ford Focus and a little smaller than a Mondeo. But inside it has the headroom of a coffin.

Speaking of which, it didn’t do especially well in its Euro NCAP safety tests. The airbag didn’t inflate sufficiently well to stop the dummy driver’s head hitting the steering wheel, and while the feet and neck were well looked after, protection for the thighs and genitals was only “marginal”. I make no observation about that. Yet. Of course, as it’s a Chinese car that’s assembled in Longbridge, you would not expect much in the way of quality. And it doesn’t disappoint.

It’s a widely held belief that mass- produced plastic was developed around the turn of last century. Well, the dashboard on the MG6 appears to be fabricated from a plastic that pre-dates that. I think it may follow a recipe laid down in the Middle Ages, when villagers would use cattle horns to make rudimentary windows.

Naturally there are many sharp edges. There’s one in particular on the steering wheel that could probably give you an elegant paper cut on that sensitive bit of webbing between your index finger and thumb.



Then there’s the kung-fu cupholder. It’s not damped, as it would be in a normal European car, so when you push the button your drink leaps out onto your passenger’s leg like Cato from the Pink Panther films. And it is a struggle to get any can I’ve ever seen to fit in it.

I shall talk now about the steering. It’s electric. But only literally. It feels as though the steering wheel is connected to an egg whisk of some kind. Spin it fast enough and the blades turn, causing a vat of creamy milk to start thickening. After this happens it begins to revolve v e r y s l o w l y and that action produces a centrifugal force that turns the front wheels. It’s a neat idea but I’m not sure it works very well.

As a boy, I used to look at my dad driving and wonder how he knew how much to turn the wheel when going round a corner. Alarmingly, in the MG6 you don’t.

Last weekend in Scotland I encountered many members of the MG Owners’ Club, driving from breakdown to breakdown with dirty fingernails and big grins on their faces. They had their roofs down, despite the cold, and it all looked very hearty and rorty and James May-ish.

The MG6 offers an experience that is nothing like that. It may say MG on the rump but it is as far removed from its predecessors as you are from an amoeba. It’s a carrier bag with a Coco Chanel badge. And I think that’s rotten.

The whole car’s rotten, really, and here’s the clincher. It’s not that cheap. The Magnette model I drove is £21,195. And for that you can have a normal car that doesn’t lacerate your fingers, stall, refuse to start, bash your head in every time you go over a bump and ruin your gentleman sausage if you have a crash.

In the whole of April the new MG operation sold 13 cars throughout the whole of the UK. I’m surprised it was that many.



Verdict ★☆☆☆☆

Rotten to the core.

Factfile

MG6 Magnette 1.9 DTi-Tech

Release date:
Out now
Price:
£21,195
Engine:
1849cc, 4 cylinders
Power:
148bhp @ 4000rpm
Torque:
258 lb ft @ 1800rpm
Transmission:
6-speed manual
Acceleration:
0-60mph in 8.9sec
Top speed:
120mph
Fuel:
53.5mpg
CO2:
139g/km
Road tax band:
E (£125 for first year)
Dimensions:
L 4651mm, W 1837mm, H 1472mm

[Rob Bell]

Hmm, pretty damming. I've not driven one so I can't comment, but surely no modern car should stall like that? I'd agree regarding the interior quality - and it's why our increasingly aged ZTT remains firmly in our family fleet. Also I agree with Clarkson regarding the prices. This isn't a cheap car. It should be.

Fingers crossed the MG3 will be much closer to expectations. It should be affordable (£10-12k), I'm told. And for that one can forgive interior plastics assuming that it drives well. And it should if Andy Kitson and Alan Phillips had any hand in its development...

[Hainsie]

Believe me Rob, they are a fantastic car to drive. Only stalls with a muppet not understanding how a stop / start system works!

Join teh campaign to oust Clarkson and replace him with William Woollard!

[Rob Bell]

Believe me Rob, they are a fantastic car to drive. Only stalls with a muppet not understanding how a stop / start system works!

Join teh campaign to oust Clarkson and replace him with William Woollard!

I remember Autocar being complementary about the 6's handling

I hope the 3 will be better, but its a shame that its only to be sold as a 5 door...