Cars such as the MG HS are fast becoming a familiar part of the British landscape
This may be the year in which so many new Chinese car brands finally hit UK showrooms.
Within a soup that has been augmented with new ingredients only rarely over the years, we will rather suddenly have Jaecoos, Havals, Leapmotors, Xpengs, IMs and more to get to know.
We will need to work out what the hell the plural of a Seres is, then, and explain to everyone that Skywell makes not air-conditioning units but electric cars.
The EU’s tariffs on EVs imported from China may now draw these brands to the UK market sooner than anticipated, making us continental experts on these newbies.
Are we to be flooded with them? You can bet that certain quarters of the national press will say so. But it’s okay: we can all just agree not to buy the rubbish ones, and if you’re not sure which those are, well, you know where to find out.
Brits are, of course, already buying the good ones. One Chinese import in particular was on the fringe of the UK’s top-five best-selling new cars in 2024, as recorded by the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders: the MG HS.
MG sold more of these combustion-engined, mid-sized SUVs than Audi did A3s or Volkswagen did Polos. Chinese imports from brands including BMW, Citroën, Smart and Volvo failed to even come close to emulating its success.
Since I had no first-hand experience of such an important and successful car, I considered it my duty to spend some time in one recently.
Was I illuminated? A little. Surprised? Perhaps. Reassured? Less so, mostly because I’ve had plenty of experience of other current MG models and already knew that the brand is way beyond pushing sub-standard products for junk prices.
Suffice to say that, if you are labouring under that kind of misapprehension, a few days in an HS would be enough to cure you of it.
It is, first and foremost, that budget-brand old chestnut: a lot of metal for the money. It’s a family-sized SUV with practicality and space that you could compare with, say, the Audi Q5 but can get for the price of a Skoda Kamiq.
MG actually pitches it against the likes of the Kia Sportage, Hyundai Tucson and Citroën C5 Aircross, although it undercuts even them on price, as well as outreaching many of them for usable space.
The seats are comfortable; the boot is generous; the body design is neat, modern and inoffensive. There is certainly little if any pervading sense of cheapness or austerity about the HS, aside from one or two low-rent dashboard mouldings.
MG has learned to spend on the components that users will touch regularly: column stalks, window switches, door releases and cubby fixtures. These all feel what we might snootily – and possibly quite unjustifiably – call ‘European grade’.
Does the driving experience match up? Our first drive review of the 1.5-litre turbo petrol HS last year suggested that the entry-level model has hints of coarseness, clunkiness and lethargy about its performance, which sounds to me a bit like the MG of 10 years ago.
But I tested the more powerful plug-in hybrid model, which mates a different 1.5-litre petrol engine with a 207bhp electric motor and a two-speed automatic gearbox. It was quiet, quick, assured and really rather pleasant.
Not to mention generous with its electric-only range (which might explain why the HS has been selling so well). MG claims some 75 miles – genuinely exceptional for something you can buy for less than £32,000 and giving the HS really strong fleet appeal.
In the real world, it delivers between 55 and 65 miles before the petrol engine kicks in, and it handles competently and drives in entirely viceless fashion but for the irksomeness of the driver assistance systems (from which you are, after all, never safe whatever you buy in 2025) and the poor usability of the touchscreen infotainment system.
But my takeaway was what a ‘proper’, rounded modern car the HS is and how well it stands up in bog-standard daily use, whether you plug it in, care about the phoney aggregated MPG, know how much it costs or none of the above.
Its success clearly isn’t bought but earned.