The MG HS Review - Is this the most luxurious SUV? - video Dailymotion

Men and Motors

Join our Tom, as he reviews the stunning MG HS.   Discover how MG have combined luxury into a budget-friendly SUV is the next vehicle you should be buying. Tom's expert analysis will look into every part of the vehicle and yes he will be climbing into the boot (starting to think he might be part dog).  ------------------ Enjoyed this video? Don't forget to LIKE and SHARE the video and get involved with our community by leaving a COMMENT below the video!   Check out what else our channel has to offer and don't forget to SUBSCRIBE to Men & Motors for more classic car and motorbike content! Why not? It is free after all!   ----- Social Media -----  Follow us on social media by clicking the link below to elevate your social media experience by connecting with us! https://menandmotors.start.page  If you have any questions, e-mail us at talk@menandmotors.com  © Men and Motors - One Media iP 2024

Transcript

00:00 Welcome back to Men and Motors and today you join me with the all new MG HS and chances

00:08 are if you're looking at this car you might also be considering the MG ZS. Now to help

00:13 you guys make that decision if you want to see a full in-depth review of that car click

00:17 up here. I was lucky enough to have it for a week late last year although it was the

00:21 full battery version and this one is a full petrol engine. Now I'll get on to the differences

00:27 later on in this video but the first thing that I want to address is how different this

00:31 car looks because it is the facelift and it is just enhanced beauty. First of all you'll

00:38 notice you get this massive mouth at the front which is a huge grill, it's now black, it

00:43 looks a lot better, you get these sleeker looking headlights and then the indicators

00:47 have actually flipped orientation and now mounted vertically here in this fake air intake.

00:53 The other good thing is you now get real 18 inch diamond cut alloys. On the ZS I express

00:59 my frustrations, you've got those hideous plastic fascia boards that you could pop off

01:04 but the good thing is these are real 18 inch diamond cut alloys. Now there are more enhancements

01:10 with this car which will result in me talking about the back or the booty because I'm so

01:14 glad they've done it and it just makes this thing look a little bit prettier. The first

01:18 thing you'll notice at the back is you get these prettier rear looking tail lights and

01:22 they've got some nice LED technology in them and they do give that full beam of light rather

01:28 than seeing the spots that you would do in cheaper or earlier LEDs. One of the best things

01:32 they've done on this car and I'm really glad and thankful for it is they got rid of those

01:36 horrible exposed exhaust and they've actually put fascias in here instead which do look

01:41 a little bit better. I never thought I'd say I'm a fan of fascias but on the previous car

01:46 if you look at the exhaust it just looked cheap and not finished properly. This looks

01:51 miles better in my opinion. One thing that really stresses me out with these HS's is

01:55 this horrible plastic fascia board here behind the reg plate. Now I know why that is because

02:00 in countries like Japan, Shanghai, Malaysia, Taiwan where these cars were first originally

02:06 released the reg plates are a lot narrower and they fit on. Bit lazy though just to bolt

02:10 the new reg plate onto the old mount when you could get rid of that and put it on it

02:14 would look a lot neater. That is something that I would do if I bought this car. Grand

02:18 Dad Statistic loading. On this model you get a powered tailgate. It is rather slow but

02:24 it is a nice touch. On the ZS I reviewed it didn't have that feature. Anyway, now whilst

02:30 we're talking about the boot and before I get in to do the litre test it is 463 litres

02:37 and that can be expanded to 1,454 if you fold the seats down and to prove it I will get

02:43 in in a second. But you notice there is quite evidently a small problem. I'm 6 foot 3 and

02:49 if I just dip my head I'm kind of hitting it and the boot of this car does open rather

02:55 low. It would be nice for it to open a bit higher. You can't though because the spoiler

03:00 would foul against the bodywork. It's a little niggle. I know I'm being a bit pedantic but

03:05 it's just one of those things. Right, do I fit in the boot? Well, you can sit quite high

03:11 like this and take in the scenery and listen to all the sheep that are currently interrupting

03:15 this review and they're now all running off because I must have scared them. But do I

03:19 fit in the boot? Let's have a look. It's quite a tight squeeze, I'm not going to lie because

03:23 the floor is quite high but I reckon I could close that. I'm not going to do it because

03:28 it's a button to open it and there's no one here to currently help me get out. You do

03:32 get this parcel shelf that comes across. Quality isn't the best on this because when you do

03:37 release it, it struggles to go back. So it's not actually the best but you can't moan.

03:43 You get a little bit of underfloor storage here, basically where a spare wheel would

03:47 go. There isn't a spare wheel in this car, there is an air inflator and a foam filler

03:52 but you've got little pockets here to put stuff under the floor and you put that down.

03:56 So all in all, the boot space is rather good and it just adds to that family car value.

04:01 Now the back end is out of the way, I should probably tell you what this is. Well, this

04:04 is the Trophy model and it costs £27,495. You might think that is ridiculous but personally,

04:13 I think it's an absolute bargain for today's money, especially with new car prices in 2024.

04:19 If you compare this to like a Vauxhall Mokka, a Ford Kuga, a Peugeot 3008, this wins in

04:25 my opinion because it absolutely boasts quality and it does feel very luxurious for that sort

04:32 of price. Now, you're probably wondering what powers

04:35 it. So, let's pop the bonnet like we normally do, where I just have to squeeze over all

04:40 this mud because I live in the 14th wettest place in the UK. If you want to drop a guess

04:44 in the comments, guess now but I'll tell you, it's Manchester. It is always raining and

04:49 it is always sloppy. It really bugs me to be honest and I know I'm ranting now but this

04:54 is meant to be a car review so I'll get back to the car review. If I open this, you get

04:58 these hydraulic rams, again, boasting quality. Most cars, you have to lift it up and prop

05:03 with a rod. So, what powers this car? It's powered by a 1.5 litre petrol turbocharged

05:11 engine with a seven-speed dual clutch automatic gearbox. It has a top speed of 118 miles per

05:18 hour, a 0-60 of 9.6 seconds and it produces 162 PS with 184 foot-pounds of torque, which

05:27 I think is ample for the size of the engine. Don't get me wrong, when you look in the engine

05:31 bay, it does look like you could fit something a lot bigger in there but with the world going

05:35 green, we need to be looking at smaller engines with battery boost and minimal emissions and

05:41 that is something what this car does. It averages around 36 mpg but I will say, after driving

05:46 roughly 500 miles in it on the motorway, I've actually managed to get over 40 mpg out of

05:51 it, driving it nice and soft. Now, one thing I absolutely love about this HS is the interior.

06:00 It is by far the best interior in a car of this price in this group. I haven't seen anything

06:07 better. It is so premium, it looks fantastic and we'll get inside and I'll now show you.

06:14 As you get inside this car, everything feels luxurious and premium. There is leather everywhere

06:21 or leather style as MG call it. Considering it's not real leather, it's probably leather

06:26 rare, it feels amazing and it also smells amazing. This has got an added option on this

06:32 car, it's around £500 more expensive but you get the two-tone leather, you get the

06:36 red and you get the black. Now, one thing I want to say about this car, every little

06:41 touchy-feely finish looks fantastic and you can tell MG have seriously focused on getting

06:49 the things right that people actually care about. One of my main frustrations with cars

06:54 nowadays is the interiors date very quickly. I don't think that's going to be the case

06:59 with this and what you have to remember is, as good as a car looks externally, you also

07:04 want it to look really nice internally because you're going to be sat there for hours on

07:09 end per week looking at this interior and it really does feel fantastic. You get these

07:15 lovely sport-style seats with alcantara on the back here, black leather on the top, red

07:20 leather on the sides. They are quite comfortable for somebody that isn't as tall as me and

07:25 I'll get into that on the road test. You get a stop/start button, a standard lovely steering

07:31 wheel which again seems very influenced by Mercedes. A lot of the buttons look very similar

07:36 to that and then you get this really strange button on the steering wheel called Super

07:41 Sport. Obviously this isn't a super sport car, this is a sports utility vehicle. So

07:46 again I'll get into that further on in the video. You've got all lovely piano gloss

07:50 black touchy-feelys everywhere, electronic handbrake, different driving modes. You can

07:54 open the tailgate sat in this position. You've got Apple CarPlay, digital dash. If I just

08:00 start the car it all comes to life. You've got all these little dials and everything

08:04 changes in front of you. The screen quality, don't get me wrong, it isn't the most crisp

08:09 and most sharp quality but again you have to take a step back and think, well this car

08:15 is £27,400. You know, it's got a lot of tech, it's very high spec. Electronic seats in here,

08:22 passenger and driver's side, electronic mirrors, heated mirrors, blind spot assist, electric

08:27 windows front and back. You've got all these little cubby holes here and the really strange

08:33 thing inside the cubby hole is it's got a little vent at the bottom. If you open and

08:37 close it, it allows air in there. It's not a fridge, that's what I did think it was because

08:41 it showed the frost sign at the start. A strange thing in this though, there is no wireless

08:45 charging pad which I find a little bit different in today's age, especially with things moving

08:50 forward you would expect that to be in here as standard. No USB-C slots either, they're

08:56 all USB 2 which again is another little strange factor but you get two in the front, two in

09:00 the back and it's enough just for people to charge their phones. Central locking buttons

09:05 here, vents everywhere, lovely again Mercedes-styled air vents I would call it. You get this lovely

09:10 perforated leather above the clocks and then on the actual dashboard it's like a really

09:15 premium plastic with a fake rubberised stitch line in there. All in all, I think this interior

09:22 is one of the best on the market for the value for money. You get ambient lighting again

09:27 which is something that everybody wants in cars nowadays and you can change the colour

09:31 of it and it has a fantastic feature called pulsing mode. So at night it will just casually

09:36 pulse through all the different colours and you can see it light up. So it's normally

09:39 down here, it's across the dashboard and it's in the door cards at the back. So what's it

09:44 like in the back? Well, the legroom is absolutely unreal. You've nearly got almost a flat floor.

09:51 Obviously there's still a little bit of a tunnel here for the exhaust but it is nearly

09:55 virtually flat. You've got two little cubbies here behind the seats and then the armrest

10:00 I'm really impressed with. Not only is it leather but when you open it, it's got this

10:05 lovely brushed titanium finish on it. If I pop that open you've got a cup holder and

10:09 if you press that you've got some room just to store like pens or whatever, whatever stuff

10:14 you normally store in the cubbies. So what's it like for legroom? Well, you know I'm a

10:18 tall guy because I've mentioned it a lot in this video but I am so comfortable sat here.

10:23 That seat in front of me is set how I would sit if I was a passenger so there's plenty

10:28 of legroom in the front. There's still enough in the back here and also there is loads of

10:33 headroom. I do not feel one bit claustrophobic or crammed in here. It is really comfortable,

10:39 a lovely place to be, nicely positioned armrest. You've got privacy glass as standard, two

10:44 USB charges down here, climate control vents that you can move around at your leisure and

10:50 it just feels like a premium finish. So does it pass the family car test? It absolutely

10:56 does. So now we've got that out of the way I think it's about time we took it out on

11:00 the road. The first thing you notice when you start to drive this car is how quiet it

11:06 is. There is a little bit of road noise there but it's nothing too aggressive and I do actually

11:10 think you could tweak that out by being selective with what tyres you put on it. Now I'm not

11:16 going to sit here and boast about how fantastically fast this car is. It isn't. It's a sports

11:22 utility vehicle, it's probably aimed at a family or you might even be considering buying

11:26 your wife one while you just have a cheap run around for work. The steering is very

11:30 smooth, very soft. It does feel quite nice. Obviously everything feels premium as I've

11:35 said earlier. You've got all different driving modes. You've got eco, normal, sport and super

11:40 sport. I'll get into what they do shortly. You even have hill descent control and I tried

11:47 this out earlier thinking would it actually do anything and you know what? It does. So

11:51 it does work and it does sort of fight the brakes and you can go down a hill actually

11:56 not holding onto anything and it will slow the car down for you. The suspension I find

12:01 quite elastic and what I mean by that is when it bounces you feel like it's immediately

12:08 pulling you back down to the floor and it's kind of over reactive. You can just see as

12:13 I hit the dips and you do feel that and the car has like an extra bounce because of how

12:17 elastic it is. Now could I live with that? Yes, I probably could live with it. It doesn't

12:23 seem to be too much of a problem. It's just something I've noticed. But if we talk about

12:28 power terrain and drive terrain, that's where things kind of get a little bit better but

12:34 a little bit sloppier at the same time. Now the gearbox is good for the money and that's

12:41 the key part in that sentence. It's good for the money. If you get in this car and compare

12:47 it to a Volkswagen Audi Group DSG gearbox, you're just going to be disappointed because

12:52 it isn't as smooth as that. In fact, sometimes it's not smooth at all and I think MG are

12:58 aware of this and it's something that will get tweaked as the later models come out.

13:04 Where it tends to be a problem is between first and second gear. It's quite jerky and

13:10 quite clunky. There's no noise that comes from it but it's like it almost struggles

13:15 or lags when going into gear and it gets even worse when you're in traffic. If you're crawling

13:21 in traffic first, second, first or first and you're just creeping forwards, it starts to

13:27 make you feel a little bit sick. There is room for improvement there with everything

13:31 but like I say, you have to take a step back, value the car for what it is and it is a cheap

13:37 SUV in today's market. There is one other niggle though that really gets on my, well,

13:44 hand boobs, we'll call them to be PC. The rear view mirror. Now it is auto dimming,

13:50 so kudos for that MG, but it is just in the wrong place. Now I'm 6 foot 3, I'm sure you

13:57 all know that because I tend to mention it in a lot of the videos just so you can get

14:00 a feel for what type of person I am driving this, but it is in the wrong place. It sits

14:06 so low in the car that when you are driving down the road and you have another vehicle

14:12 at 10 o'clock on the motorway or maybe in another lane on a dual carriageway or you

14:16 go in for the overtake, you literally cannot see it because you have this huge black plastic

14:21 surround here. It has a radar and a camera in it for the MG pilot and collision avoidance

14:27 and it also has the automatic sensor for the wipers. It just needs moving further up so

14:32 it's blocking the vision at the 10 o'clock view and that needs shrinking in size. Maybe

14:37 all the technology in it wants to be moved into the headliner so you just have the mirror.

14:43 Now again, being a tall person, I found the seats here, rather than sitting in them, because

14:50 they do look very sporty, you're more sat on them and you kind of feel like you're sat

14:55 on top of the car rather than in it and that might not be the same for somebody that's

15:00 of a smaller height or a smaller size, but for someone like me, it's quite frustrating,

15:06 I'm not going to lie. Now with the drive modes, I'm currently in

15:09 normal, which seems to be the best setting because as soon as you put it in sport by

15:15 pressing this button, nothing really changes on the car apart from the throttle response

15:21 and you don't notice it when driving down the road. You get a lot of noise and not a

15:26 lot of movement. But where it becomes frustrating, the sport modes, again a car like this, should

15:34 it have sport on it, I don't really think so, but where it really starts to get annoying

15:39 is when you pull out of a junction, I am talking that the slightest amount of pressure on the

15:47 accelerator pedal and you're like that in your seat. Whether that can be sorted out

15:51 with software, it most probably could, but it seems very overreactive and very in your

15:58 face and if you was a pedestrian and you're seeing somebody pull out of a junction like

16:02 that, you would probably mind the words. And then one thing that really confuses me

16:08 is this super sport button. It's kind of pointless, press it like this and it goes

16:15 into super sport and you put your foot down, there we go, about a four second lag and you

16:24 get a lot of noise and very little gain. The noise is there, it doesn't really pick up

16:30 fast, the steering doesn't get any stiffer, the suspension doesn't get any stiffer,

16:33 it is pretty much a gimmick. So whilst we're talking about how the car drives and everything

16:39 else, we might as well speak about MPG, because if you're buying this car, you probably want

16:42 something that's cheap to run and that is exactly what this is. Like I say, on long

16:46 journeys I've been getting over 40 miles to the gallon out of this and MG only boasts

16:51 around 36 to 37 MPG, but I've been getting over 40. On a full tank of fuel, I've been

16:57 getting well over 400 miles, so it is quite an economical car and I should imagine that

17:02 the hybrid version of this would be a lot better. MG offer a seven year warranty, which

17:08 I personally think is fantastic. You could buy this car brand new, run it for seven years

17:13 and should you stay within the mileage limits, it's not really your problem unless it's

17:17 wear and tear. And after reading on the forums, there doesn't really seem to be much that

17:21 goes wrong with these cars apart from a few electrical niggles with the earlier generations

17:27 on the infotainment system. But yeah, as a family car, should you buy one? I think you

17:32 should. And if I had to pick it against like a Vauxhall Grandland, Vauxhall Mokka, a Ford

17:38 Cougar, what would I pick? I would pick this because it is a bargain compared to them and

17:43 it just looks 10 times better. So to summarise, I think this is a fantastic car for the money.

17:51 That is the key element in this. It is a great car for the money and it is certainly winning

17:56 against the competitors that I mentioned earlier in this video. I want you to do me a favour,

18:01 let us know what you think of this car in the comments and more importantly, let us

18:04 know what you guys want to see going forward. But if you want to see what Jim's been up

18:08 to, click up here and if you want to watch some old archive Men and Motors footage, which

18:12 sometimes has never actually been aired on TV, click down here. But in the meantime,

18:18 I'll see you all very soon. It's a bit cold out here.

18:23 [Music]

18:25 [BLANK_AUDIO]

The MG HS Review - Is this the most luxurious SUV?

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