MG 6 | Shed of the Week

MG was back in the news for good reasons last week - today's contestant is a reminder of how far it's come

There’s be no attempts at humour this week because Shed has been feeling a bit down after receiving a glancing blow from one of Mrs Shed’s heavier saucepans. For once, it was an accident. Mrs S was making banana and escargot pancakes at the time. Some of the lithium grease she’d boshed into the pan for lubrication purposes got onto her hand. The pan slipped in the course of a particularly energetic toss and suddenly Shed was on the deck dreaming of happier times. 

Like when he took one of the first MG 6s around Anglesey circuit ten or so years ago. Yes, that’s right, he enjoyed driving a car that many on here wouldn’t even bother to sneer at, let alone drive. As we all know these MG 6s are Chinese cars based on the 2008-on Roewe 550. They came as a four-door Magnette saloon or a five-door hatch, like here. 

For the UK market they were built from kits in what remained of the old Longbridge factory. SAIC had also been wise enough to let some of the old Longbridge boys do the chassis tuning, and a very decent job they made of it too. In period the ride was described as firm and controlled. Less charitable folk called it crashy on rougher roads, but around Anglesey Shed found a well balanced and surprisingly chuckable car with smart turn-in.

It was also one of those Marmite cars that would split a room. Apart from the styling, which was a bit clod-hoppy from some angles, It was a funny sort of size somewhere in between a Focus and a Mondeo so nobody was quite sure if they were the ones who were supposed to be buying it. The cabin was pretty plasticky too and the bent handbrake looked like a desperate attempt to inject some visual interest. 

Still, there was decent space for four and the boot under the hatch’s tailgate was big enough to contain even the biggest saucepans in Mrs Shed’s collection, right up to her much loved cast iron and brass Dreadnought model that she hammered out herself on her granny’s anvil. The 6’s big A-pillars and oddly huge door mirrors compromised the view ahead somewhat but the bodywork was well put together and the paint quality was very nice, and arguably better than what you might get on something like an Octavia.

Equipment was good on the SEs too. You got sat nav, cruise control, hill-hold, parking sensors and (Shed thinks) automated speed limit warnings, which was actually a good idea because the 157hp TCI-Tech 1.8 rework of the K-series petrol engine was capable of whooshing you up to those limits more quickly than you might expect, its 0-60mph time being in the low 8s. It showed its age by only having five speeds in the gearbox. Top gave you 70mph at 2,500rpm, which was OK, but the absence of a sixth cog meant you needed to drop it into fourth for any sort of acceleration on the motorway. The engine got a bit strainy in the upper rev ranges and your mpg would quickly start to drop away from the official number of 37mpg if you insisted on pressing on. 

Talking of dropping, that’s what happened to the 1.8T engine for the gen-two MG 6 which came out in 2016 with a new grille and, some might say, a less divisive appearance. Unfortunately for British MG 6 fans, if there were any, the engine wasn’t the only thing to get dropped. The whole gen-two car was axed from the UK range.

Back with our 107,000-mile shed, the most recent MOT test in January resulted in a clean pass, as did the Jan ’23 one, just as you might expect from a two-owner car with a full service history. Easy passes have been the story throughout its life if you don’t count normal wear items like front balljoints, bald tyres and broken reg plate bulbs. Other things do go wrong like the cruise control, the Garmin-ish sat nav, gearboxes and clutches. Inside, rattling trim could be an issue, and the keyfob was needlessly cheap and nasty, a small thing that had a disproportionately large effect on your perception of the car. 

Despite all that, and despite the general hate from the contemporary press (many of whom were young and scared of being laughed at by their mates) the MG 6 looks all right to Shed’s watery old eyes. The MG brand is going to get a massive boot up the jacksy in August when the awkwardly named but promising Cyberster sports car goes on sale. There’s quite a gulf between one of them and a 6, but there again a Cyberdrone won’t be £2k plus £335 for the tax.

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