"The whole car is rotten.."

So has anybody else read Clarkson's MG6 diesel review in the Sunday Times?

"The car that's so bad clarkson had to get out and push". Choice snippets are 'hysterically terrible', 'didn't work', 'stalled and would not restart', 'finally clattered into life', 'frazzled clutch', 'interesting faults', 'headroom of a coffin', 'many sharp edges', 'steering wheel is connected to an egg whisk'... it goes on and on and on.

Verdict: Rotten to the core.

Aside from pulling apart the article (much of which is balls - apparently it 'didn't do especially well in NCAP safety tests'!) - what CAN they do to counter this sort of thing? They are into laughing-stock territory; do they come out fighting, ignore it, try again? A relaunch with the MG3 at a LOWER price? The only glimmer of hope is that he seems to say you can put up with some sort of crap for a cheap price. He also makes an argument that MG 'is as far removed from its predecessors as you are from an amoeba'. Which is all the more reason to make something vaguely sporting BEFORE any SUV moves the brand further away from what it was.

It's a valid arguement to a point - you can't reinvent and reposition a brand yet try and cash in on it's past.

What DO they do now??

I don't think many people take any notice of Clarksons Sunday Time articles, they are entertainment not fact like Top Gear, normally they say almost nothing about the car.


Other reviews for the diesel have been pretty good, with the electro-hydraulic steering getting lots of praise, I thought it had quite a lot of headroom too, although I'm not quite 6'5.

Well I thought that. The things he criticised have won praise elsewhere. It's a proper hatchet job; doesn't bode well for any review of the 3.

Morris Motors wrote:Well I thought that. The things he criticised have won praise elsewhere. It's a proper hatchet job; doesn't bode well for any review of the 3.

I've read through it again and given that most of these articles contain almost nothing about the car I think it's actually quite a good advert, the first part contains everything MG are trying to tell us, being compared to Churchill isn't bad and Coco Chanel?

There are a few negatives but nobody is going to take them literally, The steering is a puzzle as others say it's good, the lack of head room also a puzzle as it's fine for 6'4 even in the back and the cup holder throwing the drink at you obviously stupid as the drink can't be in the cup holder until after you have pressed the button!

He has also pointed out that the highest priced and specified model is fairly cheap - "for that you can have a normal car". People will read that section in different ways but unless you are looking for the message that it is bad I suspect most will get the message that it is not a really cheap Chinese car (nobody wants one of them) but also not an expensive car (nobody likes to pay too much) and also that it is a bit different, not a "normal car" (something a bit different to the crowd).

How do you understand the message on the front cover?

He plans to attack it with plenty of effort?



Is the lightweight all alloy diesel easier to stall than other diesels? Maybe he was trying to find out and then discovered that he didn't know how to use the key - once stalled you can't just turn it to restart, you can't just push it either!

It's not even consistent - he says it should have been promising because it was from the firm that owned the IPR for the Rover 75, but he spent 6 years slating it. The tone is that of a very angry man determined to trash it.

I think it's misleading - and damaging. What is the general perception of Chinese cars that MG has to counter? The answer, courtesy of many YouTube videos and Top Gear reports, is poor safety. He then states it didn't perform very well in NCAP but nowhere does it state that it actually got 5 stars. The impression to those who know nothing about them is that the car is absolute crap and probably dangerous.

As for the headroom - he was in a diesel Magnette - they have the sunroof which shaves a couple of centimetres off.

Unfortunately it is clear that all too many of the people whose views about this we read have already decided the MG6 is "s***" without ever having been in one. So-called MG fans.

I imagine getting Clarkson to review your car involves a huge PR department schmooze, car preparation, and back-up. If he approached the review knowing he wasn't going to like it (British car, Chinese, Longbridge, safety etc.) it wasn't going to impress him!

Well he says he asked for a car and was put off over and over. This is the same car that was reviewed by Richard Porter at the same time on another site. He was more generous - and didn't stall it. From his review, it wasn't clear how they got hold of it; they both seem to have said they managed to sneak a drive in it. I wonder if they were insured whilst driving it and where they got hold of it?

Also the photos of Clarkson pushing it have his Top Gear producer in them - was the car supposed to be a 'studio prop' for a segment as I believe they used a blue one a year ago like that? Why is a BBC producer with him test driving a car for the Sunday Times?

He would have written the article pretty much as it is without ever having sat in the thing - and then the breakdown happened. I wonder what the issue was? He doesn't say...

Oh, actually he did appear to have stalled it. But no pushing to the side of the road though.

The rival Daily Mirror published snaps on 11 May of him pushing a "flash car"...

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/jeremy-clarkson-fails-hit-top-1881557

he’s always been a pushy sort of fella, that Jeremy Clarkson…

And here’s the Top Gear host having to put his back into it after an MG6 car he was driving conked out on a yellow box junction.

The 53-year-old looked a bit sheepish as he and pal Andy Wilman had to shove it past chuckling onlookers.

patpending wrote:The rival Daily Mirror published snaps on 11 May of him pushing a "flash car"...

I still don't think they are just snaps, that was a professional photographer who took them from the following car so they were doing something with it rather than just using it to travel. I can believe that having stalled it, they couldn't work out how to restart it, but they could also have been having some fun creating a story having found an excuse to avoid legal problems - it's not obvious how to use the key.

Anyway, it's got into the Mirror, it's got into the Sunday Times, it's got on the front cover of the Sunday Times motoring supplement and it seems likely to at least get a mention in Top Gear. Plenty of publicity and at the moment that is something MG Motor need.

Maybe MG should do a silly advert about Clarkson not being able to use the key

Do they want to start a war with him? He has a far greater reach than ANY advertising campaign MG have managed to come up with so far.

I am very interested in where they got the car from. It was obviously a Longbridge car on loan to *someone*, and MG obviously didn't know quite who was going to get their hands on it (3 Top Gear people that we know of - Clarkson, Wilman and Porter). Was it actually insured? I'm sure MG know who was supposed to have it and I'm sure that person won't be getting another one.

However, if there was something 'not right' about that car, it doesn't matter whether it's being used by me, you, Clarkson or HM Queen, it shouldn't get out of Longbridge with any issues at all.

Lets face it - they aren't busy; they could be stripping down and reassembling every component by hand and achieve the best build quality on the market. There's no excuse for putting 'unreliable' cars out there.

I presume you guys have seen MG motor's response to the article?!


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 lead 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 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



I think its the best thing they could have done. Some will call it childish or petty - but any free exposure gained from this can only be a good thing.

snifferdog1 wrote:I think its the best thing they could have done. Some will call it childish or petty - but any free exposure gained from this can only be a good thing.

A war with Clarkson would make for lots of publicity and would probably bring them a fair bit of support, they can't back down now, it's Clarkson's move...

I guess he will apologise since he has more to loose than MG Motor has and unlike MG Motor nothing to gain! Much better to do it in public than in court.

He won't apologise! He will EVISCERATE the MG3 now

And if they are inviting the world's press, they'd better give them a MUCH better tour than the one they charge ordinary punters a fiver to go on - the factory looks deserted, the small conference room at the sales centre is shabby and knackered... At least they've got until the 12th to redecorate and fill the place with a 'bustling' production line of cars

A fiver to go on the tour? It was free when I went.

snifferdog1 wrote:I presume you guys have seen MG motor's response to the article?!...

EDIT Yesterday, this appeared only on aronline and some commentators were wondering whether it was a fake.

I see that John Newey of Summit Motors has confirmed the text is by MG Motor and has been e-mailed to dealers.

http://forums.mg-rover.org/showpost.php?p=5464922&postcount=10

Some people are not sure whether MG should have stuck their head over the parapet, but many think a discussion about the article's accuracy will at least publicise the car.

snifferdog1 wrote:A fiver to go on the tour? It was free when I went.

It was free when I went too - website says its a fiver now.

As for that statement, it must be genuine or they;d have got it taken down by now. Which is another odd thing - why release it on that site which hosts a lot of negativity, especially when the editor was in MGs bad books?

The whole situation is just dreadful. But if it gets MGs marketing team on the offensive then maybe some good will come of it - unless the publicity kills them first.