It is always easy to remember the distinctive car brands, which is exactly the case with SAIC MG, which is also one of the few brands that can improve Chinese consumers' perception of cars.
MG and Roewe, two car brands from SAIC, have been inextricably linked in the past, and they can once find models corresponding to their own in each other's product lineups. With the evolution of automobile production models and the differences in their respective positioning, they gradually have their own style, of which MG takes the fashion sports route.
MG has its own understanding of both fashion and sports, and even once influenced the Chinese people's aesthetics of car design and their views on the athletic performance of their own brands.
In terms of design, MG models are almost the most radical of all own brands in terms of shape and color. Although the model designs of various car companies will now incorporate relevant trend elements, MG is obviously more bold to adopt more impactful lines and colors, such as more exaggerated nets and brighter colors.
In terms of sports, since the earliest MG 6, MG has established itself as a seat in the sports car circle of its own brand. At that time, the Civic seconds and seconds of air, and in the pure fuel family car, mg MG 6 can have good performance parameters in the case of more exaggerated styling, the key is that the driving experience is more intense than the Civic.
The MG ONE we test drove today inherits the style and driving control genes of mg 6 to a certain extent. It does have a lot of character, but it's not perfect, and it's even easy to ask questions.
Young consumer groups, become a niche group?
Here at MG, it is a strange thing that young people have the potential to become a small group of people.
MG ONE debuted half a year ago and opened pre-sales at the 2021 Guangzhou Auto Show, with orders for about 3,000 units a week. Later, according to the sales volume published on the Internet, the figure was fixed at 3066 vehicles, with reference to the order situation of new cars released in the past year, and the impact of mg brand to comprehensively analyze, which is a qualified achievement, but it is not very good.
Two or three years ago, major car companies began to shout slogans to capture the aesthetics of young consumers, so the latest generation of models have a very avant-garde design style. MG has also made further changes in this regard, and MG ONE was born in this context.
MG ONE has a huge grille, the unique grid design has different light and shadow effects at different angles, very eye-catching. It does not use the more popular split headlight design, but the rough and tough body line makes its overall shape very tense, and the hidden roof is a more "traditional" design in the whole car shape.
The most important thing that cannot be ignored is the color matching of mg models. Nowadays, the more famous sports models, especially the models of independent brands, have bold color matching, which is a style that has gradually formed in recent years. On the other hand, each car company has a different understanding of the color brightness, MG is one of the few brands that are more enthusiastic about high brightness color matching, just like the MG ONE test drive on the same day, which uniformly adopts the bright orange color matching.
The high-tension design with high-brightness color scheme is very easy to attract the attention of everyone in a well-lit environment, and such a design has become the label of MG.
However, such an eye-catching design that is a bit "publicity" also makes MG, an independent brand that focuses on young consumer groups, become a "niche" brand to a certain extent in the environment where young people have gradually become the largest consumer group. Because its personality is too distinct, and more importantly, its driving experience also makes it difficult to please most consumer groups.
The after-effects of the pursuit of extreme driving control performance
Whether it is because the performance research and development of the fuel engine has reached the so-called end, or because the performance of new energy models has become the standard, more and more performance cars have begun to appear in today's independent brands.
At present, the mainstream domestic independent car market has almost tried to be equipped with a 1.5T engine, and the tuning of each family can be said to have reached the point of pure fire. Power output has increased to about 180 hp, and the peak torque is as high as 280 Nm and above, which is only the beginning, that is, the "pass" of the industry.
Such an adjustment was difficult to imagine five years ago, because only Honda, which "bought an engine and delivered a car", would have such an operation, and at that time, the Honda family's Civic was also known as a generation of god cars.
Mg MG ONE is also equipped with a 1.5T engine, which can output 181 horsepower and peak torque of up to 285 Nm, which is already amazing to watch. In addition, the engine is matched by a CVT gearbox, which uses Bosch's third-generation high-torque steel belt, which is theoretically designed to cope with the high power output of the engine.
So is this car really great to drive? Indeed.
In the actual test drive process, although the structural characteristics of the CVT affect the overall power output effect to a certain extent, from the perspective of the acceleration feeling of the medium and high speed domain, the mg ONE engine does have a very abundant power reserve. It's just that every time you step on the pedal, although it will react immediately, the rhythm of speeding up is still slightly softer.
This feeling is very similar to the Civic of that year, they are also equipped with 1.5T engines, the same use of CVT gearbox, and even the acceleration characteristics are very similar. And as long as it is driven on high speed, it is easy to drive quickly unconsciously, which is the "disadvantage" of excess engine power.
On the other hand, when driving at a medium speed on the national highway, MG ONE will give you a strong sense of speed. The logic of this sense of speed is a bit of a chicken thief, which is roughly improved by hearing and touch, such as a strong sense of fine road, and various types of noise will be slightly stronger.
Don't think that this is a pure reduction in NVH levels, but rather, it is a very difficult to balance tuning. In terms of NVH, it is easy to release oneself at will, which can easily cause inferior driving control, and to pursue the level of NVH to the extreme, it is only necessary to spend more money on body design and materials. If you want to control the road sense and wind noise, you need to try to do various combinations in many details.
The NVH level of a car is an intuitive feeling for consumers, and there is an easy to ignore level in evaluating the quality of this feeling, that is, whether it is acceptable. To put it simply, although consumers feel the vibration and hear the noise, if it is acceptable, then it becomes a "clear sense of the road" and "a surging sound effect".
In this way, MG ONE has indeed achieved this level, but for most consumers, this level of NVH balanced in order to create a sense of sportiness is easy to cause "roughness".
So, whether to please most consumers or maintain the uniqueness of driving control, who is right and who is wrong, and how to measure it?
Bell description
From the overall point of view, MG ONE is a highly completed model, in addition to the multimedia application in the car system is a little insufficient, as a means of transportation or a model that highlights personality, it has done its job.
However, the question also comes, it was originally facing the vast majority of young users, but because of its personality and became a "niche" model, is it worth it?