Parkers’ new cars editor Alan Taylor-Jones is living with an MG4 after it was picked as our 2024 Car of the Year. Will four months with a top-spec Trophy Extended Range reassure him that it was the right call?

141

Update 1: Welcome

Introducing my long term MG4 Trophy Extended Range

As new cars editor for Parkers, Car of the Year season is always a stressful time. It’s not just the planning, testing and hours of discussion, it’s also whether we’ve made the right decision. I was therefore keen to spend more than a week or two with 2024’s champion, the MG4 electric hatchback.

While my experienced colleagues and I can tell a lot about a car in a week, or even a few hours, you only really get to know it when you live with one. Without wishing to spoil anything, that quickly became apparent the first time I handed the keys to my wife. I’m afraid you’ll need to wait for update two when I discuss space and practicality to find out her discovery.

As this is my first report, let’s get to know my new long-termer. The Extended Range model – one that’ll confusingly do more miles on a charge than the Long Range – appealed thanks to its 323-mile range, a big chunk up from the 218 miles of the entry-level car and usefully more than the 281-mile Long Range. If I’m honest the Extended Range’s 245hp also appealed, giving quicker acceleration than the smaller batteried models.

141

What you get as standard with an MG4 Trophy Extended Range

While the bottom two battery sizes get a choice of SE or Trophy trim, and the hot MG4 XPower is its own model, Extended Range is limited to top Trophy trim. Even so, the price before options is a reasonable £36,495, or less than many similarly sized rivals that’ll do 100 miles less on a charge.

Here are 10 features of note that are standard:

1. 360 degree parking camera with front and rear sensors
2. Blind spot monitoring
3. Adaptive cruise control with steering assist
4. Climate control
5. Auto dimming rear view mirror
6. Wireless smartphone charging
7. Keyless entry and start
8. Apple CarPlay and Android Auto
9. LED headlights
10. Heated front seats and steering wheel

Optional extras

MG doesn’t do options, so it’s just the paint I had to choose. Volcano Orange is £695 and seemingly quite a popular option. It really brings out the wannabe Lamborghini Urus in my opinion. All in, that makes it £37,190, with very attractive leasing rates also available. At the time of writing, even the Extended Range is less than £300 a month.

I do already feel that I might have picked the wrong model, though. The Extended Range sits higher and feels stiffer than the Long Range car. That hurts the ride and the handling, two things that previously impressed. Will the extra pep of the more powerful motor make up for this? I’ll let you know once it’s we’ve got a few more miles under our belts.

Update 2: Interior, space and practicality

What’s it like inside, and how spacious is it?

141

Space in the MG4 has so far proved mostly sufficient, despite it being one of the smaller cars the Taylor-Jones family has run on long-term test. A 363-litre boot sounds small compared to rivals of a similar size but happily swallows a pushchair, change bag and plenty of shopping, or a stick buggy, paddle board and kayak for summer days by the river.

The trip can’t be far if grandma and grandpa are along for the ride, though. The MG4 isn’t particularly broad, so two adults and an Isofix seat will struggle for space, and dealing with seatbelts is very awkward. Three adults and a child seat is fine, with sufficient head and legroom for those in the back. Front passengers find the seat further forward than they’d like in order to accommodate a rear-facing child seat behind them, but the space on offer is certainly good for the money.

Everyday oddment storage is sufficient for toddler life if not as deep and multi-layered as some rivals. The lid to the storage bin between the front seats was always open and filled with easily accessed necessities including our phones. There is a dedicated wireless charging pad that’s more easily reached higher up the dash, but my wife and I find our phones are far too easily dislodged during cornering, sending them flying into the footwells.

141

A pair of cupholders is a given in a modern car, although the MG4’s aren’t very can-friendly. The sprung plastic grippers squeeze too tightly and make it hard to pull out much to the disappointment of my Diet Coke drinking wife. We also found the plinth the gear selector sits on got in the way of lifting our drinks up. It’s a minor issue, granted, but it does get annoying on longer journeys.

My wife is also not a fan of the MG4’s wide sills that make it hard to get out without catching the back of your calves. Not only does it transfer muck onto the backs of your legs, it hurts if you stand up too close. Other bits of the MG4 best experienced at a distance include the plastic on the tops of the the doors inside. Admittedly, our test car arrived with over 8000 miles on the clock, but the scratch marks in the hard plastic are disappointing, even at this early age.

The quality of the interior is perfectly acceptable if you bear in mind the price you pay. The seat fabrics look and feel cheap and there’s not huge swathes of soft touch plastics, but there’s enough pizazz to lift it above the bargain basement. What few buttons there are do help, which is good as the infotainment system isn’t the best.

141

Its resolution and responses are starting to feel a bit old compared to newer rivals, with CarPlay and Android Auto a welcome bypass to much of MG’s software. Icons that are too small, and menus too complicated make it tricky at times to use on the move, with one exception.

There’s a pair of star buttons on the steering wheel that are configurable via the central touchscreen. My favourite of these is the ability to adjust temperature or fan speed using one of the square joysticks nearby on the steering wheel spoke. Instructions appear on the infotainment screen that you soon remember, making adjustments easy on the move.

As much as it’d been fine for every day life, it quickly became apparent the MG would be too small for a planned family camping holiday. I can partially blame my in-laws for buying a family of three a huge six-person tents (a luxury we certainly came to appreciate), but it’s the range of leisure items (including that kayak and paddle board) and toddler essentials that almost filled a Mercedes V-Class. Whoops.

Update 3: Performance, handling and range

How well does it drive, and what’s the range like?

141

There’s a very good chance the top picture on this page will be of me in a red early MG4 Long Range having a surprising amount of fun. Not only would it do big silly skids with the stability control off, it blended comfort and body control well, so it was pleasant to live with and handled very tidily.

As I touched upon in my initial report, Extended Range models get tweaked suspension to presumably deal with the extra weight and size of the battery pack. Stiffer suspension makes sense to me as there’s more weight to contain, but the increase in ride height is more puzzling. I can only assume the larger 74kWh Extended Range battery hangs a little lower beneath the car, so MG jacks up the suspension slightly to protect it.

The result is a stiffer, more fidgety ride than lesser MG4s especially on battered urban roads. Larger and wider wheels won’t be helping matters here, but they do generate more grip than the smaller items fitted to Standard and Long Range cars. Unfortunately, it’s more likely to be bothered by mid-corner bumps and doesn’t feel as agile as those cars.

141

Perhaps my biggest complaint is that the traction and stability control can no longer fully be turned off. I doubt many out there will be seeing how good a drift car the MG4 is, but I can tell you that the Long Range above was easier to slide than a Toyota GR86. For me, that’s very appealing.

I’d never have called the Long Range slow, yet MG has still increased power from that car’s 204hp to my car’s 245hp, dropping the 0-62mph time into the sixes and not far off hot hatch territory. It feels urgent off the line and has good traction thanks in part to wider tyres mounted to those bigger alloy wheels.

141

The pace certainly gives you more confidence when overtaking on a single carriageway, getting up to motorway speeds on a short sliproad, or just being first away from the lights. However, it’s not worth the ride and handling penalty in my opinion, and we’ve never got near 300 miles of range from a single charge.

We’ve been averaging around 3.4 miles per kWh from our Extended Range, which works out as about 250-260 miles of real world driving. That is a significant amount off the claim of 323 miles, although our MG4 does spend a fair amount of time on the dual carriageway and getting up to speed quickly is too fun to resist much of the time. A rapid charge rate of 144kW is good for the money, trumping most direct rivals, but we’ve not seen that headline figure yet.