#MG and Jeremy Clarksons row in full: aronline.co.uk/blogs/news/mg-news/mg-motor-uk/news-the-clarkson-review-mg-motor-uks-response/ According to Jeremy Clarkson, the new MG, designed and engineered in Birmingham, England is ‘as Chinese as Chopsticks’. To the 300 Designers and Engineers based at the MG Birmingham site who were responsible for the design and engineering of the MG6 this is clearly an insult. The styling of the car was led by talented British Design Director Tony Williams-Kenny, educated at none other than Coventry University, England and the Engineering Team was led by fellow Brit, Dave Lindley. It has taken years of hard work to secure over £500m of long-term inward investment into the UK and the creation of 400 jobs (on a site where we all know back in 2005 there were suddenly none) in the Birmingham design, engineering and assembly facility. This new investment in automotive design, engineering and assembly at this point in the economy is something Britain should celebrate. So why does the Sunday Times promote trying to undermine this? On 12 June, MG will open its UK design facility for one day to UK Media to see the investment and results of the British Design Team and we challenge the Sunday Times to send a journalist to report the facts and not the fiction from this great British story. As far as the car goes, according to Clarkson he had to push the car because it was so bad. The car that he drove was on loan to Andy Wilman, Top Gear’s Producer. During the eight days Mr Wilman had the car we were not called or contacted about any alleged problems. When the car was collected from Mr Wilman it drove perfectly. Our Engineers have thoroughly inspected the car and no faults were found or could be traced. The car Jeremy Clarkson was driving at the time it was on loan was silver – the car on the front cover is blue! The car is described as stalling at the lights, but [Mr Clarkson] fails to mention that it is fitted with a fuel-saving Stop Start system that switches off the engine in this situation and then automatically restarts using the same logic as most other manufacturers. The crash test report excludes the rating and is summarised as, ‘didn’t do especially well’. We think your readers may be surprised to hear it scored four stars out of five in the stringent Euro NCAP test, the same rating as the highly acclaimed Jaguar XF. And then there is the cupholder that Clarkson said, ‘when you push a button your drink leaps out onto your passenger’s leg’. Your drink is not in it when it comes out, which is the same as any other car, so it is impossible to spill your drink in this way in the MG6… or in any other car. Clarkson says the car is not cheap and we agree. But it is great value. Clarkson is correct in saying the car is larger than a Focus and with a 258lb ft high torque engine mated to a six-speed gearbox and Stop Start technology as standard on all models for £16,995, it is a lot of car for the money. With insurance at only Group 14/15E it offers the best combination of performance, space and features in the market with the lowest insurance. So we invite the UK public to look at this with rather more open eyes and really drive the car and then write what they think about it. We are pretty sure they will be positively surprised. Yours faithfully, MG Motor UK PR Department Weve printed Jezzers review here: oppositelock.jalopnik/jeremy-clarkson-reviews-2013-mg6-magnette-1583209547 According to the promotional material, the MG6 was conceived, designed, engineered and built in Britain. Its 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 theres nothing to watch on television these days. Its 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. Its the Spitfire, the hovercraft and Nelson. Its Churchill. Its Elgar. Its Wordsworth and Shakespeare and Brunel. Except it isnt. 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 wasnt. 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, its 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 thats so low, no one really cares that its held together with wallpaper paste and has an engine that sounds as if its 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 Ceed. The company behind the MG6 started with an advantage. It didnt 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. Its hysterically terrible. Lets 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 didnt 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 didnt 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 didnt 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. Its 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 didnt do especially well in its Euro NCAP safety tests. The airbag didnt inflate sufficiently well to stop the dummy drivers 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 its a Chinese car thats assembled in Longbridge, you would not expect much in the way of quality. And it doesnt disappoint ... Its 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. Theres 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 theres the kung-fu cupholder. Its not damped, as it would be in a normal European car, so when you push the button your drink leaps out onto your passengers leg like Cato from the Pink Panther films. And it is a struggle to get any can Ive ever seen to fit in it. I shall talk now about the steering. Its 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. Its a neat idea but Im 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 dont. 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. Its a carrier bag with a Coco Chanel badge. And I think thats rotten. The whole cars rotten, really, and heres the clincher. Its not that cheap. The Magnette model I drove is £21,195. And for that you can have a normal car that doesnt 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. Im surprised it was that many.
Posted on: Thu, 24 Jul 2014 14:24:50 +0000
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