MG4 Electric

Really? I think of Lamborghini's defining styling characteristic being somewhat derivative in overall form but massively over-styled in the details, which describes the MG pretty well. The Prius is classically pretty (there's a sentence I never thought I'd type!) which to my mind is very much not the Lamborghini way and hasn't really been since the Miura.

The MG4 is certainly more interesting to look at than the obvious competition such as the ID3, Cupra Born and Nissan Leaf. That does rather feel like damning with faint praise though.

It’s like the 70’s again when Datsun and Honda arrived and decimated the U.K. car industry

European manufacturers today are in for a world of pain from the Chinese arrivals

Tesla model 3's are made in China. The BMW IX3 is made in China as well I think.

A colleague has one.

So far:

He left it charging in the hotel car park, all fine. The following morning, 2% charge due to an "unknown fault". AA required to recover it to dealership for fix

Another occasion, the main battery charged successfully, but a fault somewhere else caused the 12v battery to go flat: AA required, dealership fixed after 3 days.

A few weeks later on a drive to a client site, it simply stopped with 60% charge showing, AA required to recover to dealer - no fault found, they just 'performed a reset' and handed it back - after 8 days.

All of this between February and April this year.

I think I'll give this a miss. Logically: it's cheap for a reason.

There's a difference though in parts made in China to the specs of European or Japanese drawings and the so called "cheap Chinse" parts. The Chinese have got some catching up to do but they're doing it at a seriously impressive rate. Look at when Top Gear went to China. That was 2011/2012 time and the cars were pretty awful. Now they're a viable option to purchase. Cheap Chinese motorbikes are doing the same. 2015 bikes were still using carburettors that were poorly copied from an 80's Honda design. Now they're everywhere. My local dealership is selling numerous brands. They've taken over Benelli, Royal Enfield and a handful of other known brands. We're definitely in for a Chinese revolution.

I think the nature of the internet tends to skew these things. I have no experience of MG either way, but I do have a fair bit of experience of Kia (via my parents' Picanto) and whilst the internet is full of horror stories about them refusing to honour their warranty yet my parents have had no problems whatsoever on the rare occasion they've had to use it.

If you compare the stories about MGs to those about other mainstream brands, they don't really seem to be any better or worse in terms of either reliability or customer service.

My dad had a 1978 Cavalier in yellow. That looked like a Lamborghini too.

They just look a bit odd, not ugly or pretty, just odd and ill-proportioned. They would benefit from larger wheels to balance it out a bit.

We visited our local dealer twice but never took a test drive, the Mrs took an instant dislike to it. The SE model is keenly priced but poorly equipped and we briefly considered a Trophy, but with metallic paint it's over £33k. The interior is a bit dowdy too.

We found a six month old Cupra Born V2 with only 1k miles for just over £31k and bought that instead three weeks ago. Very happy with it.

Plenty MG4s kicking about now though. My work (NHS) has quite a few for the community nurses. They previously had electric Corsas.

Where do you get £584? The quote shows £189.

The MG5 is a bit of an odd one because of the massive discount they did when they were new. Around the covid recovery they were offering them to public service workers (or anyone it turned out really as the link was so tenuous or not checked up on). List price was £27-30k if memory serves me right, but I am sure my Dad bought one for £21k in 2021 in pov spec via the tenuous public sector worker thing.

The cheapest 21 plate on autotrader that has done average mileage (30k) is £16k. 25% in 2 years seems fairly typical, but agree it looks like it has tanked if you take the RRP of £27k (41%).

The RRP is probably higher now because the battery pack is bigger, and inflation.

At £16k its half tempting if you think they will honour (properly) the 8 year battery warranty. It would give you 6 years of battery related comfort. For my usage the range works well, but the car is a bit small for our family. I use an old 5 series touring instead.