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 was led 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 [Mr Clarkson] 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