MG Motor UK IM6 review

It’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing. If the wolf had written ‘I am a sheep’ on its forehead and not bothered with the clothing. Because while this electric SUV is being sold as an MG in the UK, it’s not an MG at all.

What it is is an IM, a Chinese brand under the domain of MG parent SAIC. IM needed some clout to aid its push into new overseas territories, and MG wanted something to appeal to company car folk. Lo and behold, we’ve got this: the mutually beneficial ‘MG’ IM6 SUV, plus the ‘MG’ IM5 saloon.

Both of these sit beneath the halo model that is the Cyberster, but above everything else in the MG line-up. Broadly speaking, their purpose is to appeal to business types looking to exploit Benefit-in-Kind rates that will stay in the single digits for EVs until 2030 at least. Thrifty.

MG has played around with the steering and suspension for Europe-bound cars and the infotainment is completely new, but that’s about it. There is but one MG badge on the whole car; all 4.9 metres of it.

That doesn’t fill me with confidence. Will the plan work?

It just might. MG’s gambit goes like this: hit people with big range, a tonne of interior space and tech gimmicks, then get them to sign the paperwork while they’re still in a merry daze.

There are two versions of the IM6, both of which get a 100kWh battery. The entry Long Range version is rear-wheel drive and purports 388 miles of range, while a Performance variant adds a second motor for all-wheel drive – range for that drops to 313 miles. A Launch Edition adds air suspension and active damping.

Performance? That suggests speed and power.

You’re bang on the money. The RWD Long Range is good for 402bhp and 369lb ft of torque, topping out at 146mph. Heady numbers in their own right. But the Performance generates a scarcely believable 742bhp and 591lb ft – which makes an Aston Martin Vantage look like a librarian’s coffee pot. Good grief.

0-62mph is taken care of in 3.5 seconds, which is biblical for a car that ought to be most at home whisking you between an AGM and taekwondo practice. It’s mind-shreddingly, gut-mulchingly fast – the sort of acceleration that makes you question how any sane developed nation can let you operate it on a civilian driving licence.

Wow! When can I get one?

From September, but don’t get the chequebook (do people still have those?) out just yet. While the MG IM6 has plenty going for it, there’s also rather a lot going against it.

Chiefly the ride. It’s appalling. Slightly more forgiving than the IM5, but still appalling. It’s unsettled and irritating whatever your speed, no matter the surface you’re doing it on. The Launch Edition gets air suspension and active damping control that at least makes the axles feel like they’re on the same wavelength, but potholes still thud through the cabin. That alone is enough to put us off.

It’s also bland in the extreme. The car actually disguises its almost two-and-a-half tonnes of heft fairly well, but it gives you no feedback or encouragement whatsoever. Which is disconcerting given it’ll keep pace with a 911 GT3.

The interior’s pretty drab too, and the digital interface takes up way too much of your attention. Though we’re driving a late-stage pre-production model here, so maybe that’ll all be miraculously fixed by the time it’s showroom ready.

That’s disappointing. Chinese cars are all cheap though, so it must be an absolute steal.

Well hold on a minute: we’ve driven a lot of cars from China at this point and while most are priced at the lower end of the spectrum, the gulf isn’t as pronounced as you might think.

Ostensibly the IM6 faces off against the Tesla Model Y, Kia EV6, Skoda Enyaq, Ford Mustang Mach-E and Peugeot e-5008 – not to mention fellow insurgents, the BYD Sealion and XPeng G6 – it’s usefully bigger than all of those. And on the whole… more expensive.

It’s actually closer in size to the BMW iX, Mercedes EQE SUV, Kia EV9, Audi Q8 e-tron, and Hyundai Ioniq 9, and with the IM6 Long Range starting from £47,995, you’re getting large SUV space for mid-size money. Even the Launch Edition peaks at just £53k, which makes the existence of a six-figure SQ8 look like rogue-state disinformation.

Still, the value for money argument relies on you seeing this anonymous lozenge as a genuine alternative to premium German quality and the status that comes with it. We reckon most won’t.

This isn’t MG’s finest hour by a long stretch. Not only is the IM6 not an MG, the attempts to convince us otherwise are so half-hearted that it makes you wonder how much effort was put into the car in the first place. The poor comfort levels and banal dynamics suggests MG had too big a job on its hands getting this anywhere near Europe-ready.

Sure, you get a big battery, the interior is commodious and it’s festooned with appealing tech, but it takes more than range and space and software wizardry to make a car good. And when the touchscreen demands more attention than the windscreen, you know something’s gone horribly wrong.

Despite all that, you could still make a case for the IM6 if it were a complete bargain. But it isn’t; not compared to mid-size stuff, nor compared to bigger luxo players. The phrase ‘tough sell’ springs to mind.