MG6 GT Road Test Review18th March 2011
 MG6 After a loooong wait, finally volume production has started again
at MG's Birmingham plant. The MG6 represents a milestone for MG Motor,
the first all new MG for at 16 years and the first all new MG Saloon, probably for decades. The MG6 has arrived. MG knows the MG6 has to be good and a lot rides on the reception of the new model. Its going to be the first in a long line of new models and is the taste of things to come. One reason that the car has taken a while to morph from the Chinese MG6 to the UK/Europe spec car is down to the number of changes from the Chinese model. MG's UK based engineers spent a long time refining the ride characteristics, the Noise, Vibration & Harshness (commonly known in the trade as NVH) package has been substantially improved and there have been numerous changes in materials over the Chinese spec.
The latter is quite noticeable inside where the Piano black dash trim has gone and replaced with a very nice "technical" effect trim. I feel I ought to comment here on the numerous mentions about the switch gear made by other reviewers - yes its not perhaps up to the latest soft-touch standard, but neither is it out of the 1980s either! One review went as far as to say the trip computer was unusable! - Well, odd we both managed to use it just fine. Sure, perhaps its a bit fiddly, but certainly not unusable and I personally found it very useful to be honest.
The instrument pack received a facelift and they managed to refine the aerodynamics and reduce the drag by around 8%, which is no mean feat. This obviously has knock-on effects with fuel economy and CO2 performance, which are two areas that the 1.8turbo obviously could do with all the help it can get!
Obviously the glaring omission at launch is a Turbo Diesel variant. One is in the pipeline, but around 12-18 months away. The Diesel point actually demonstrates SAIC's attitude towards MG at the moment. They could have bought in from another manufacturer, there are plenty of TD engines they could have bought, but SAIC want to put their stamp on their cars. They want to produce their own products, not use someone else's. Obviously this has limits - no point engineering their own ABS modules, but the forthcoming Diesel engine is their own design, designed by the powertrain team at MB Birmingham and whilst they wouldn't give target power ratings, we were told that it would be competitive for the market - make of that what you will!
They do actually have test cars running around at the moment, but as the powertrain engineer outlined, it can take anywhere from 18 months to 2 years to go from mule to production, its far from a simple task. Not to surprising when you consider they not only have to integrate the engine with the car's wiring & technological systems, but also refine the engine map, emissions & power delivery characteristics too, as its a brand new engine.
There's also the added complexity that they are developing a brand new 6 speed box along side the Diesel engine as well.
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