More than 4000 Brits bought a new MG 3 last year. That’s admirable, considering that this supermini was launched over a decade ago and, with its somewhat crude dynamics and especially its rough petrol engine, it signalled that fact pretty clearly – although MG executives admit that this car, one of the very cheapest on the UK market, was aimed at people who just wanted something new with a warranty, and better yet a seven-year one.
The second-generation 3, just arrived, is all-new and an entirely different proposition: a thoroughly modern-looking design, with new underpinnings, MG’s first full-hybrid powertrain and a higher-quality interior with a new touchscreen infotainment system and digital dash.
Indeed, MG says it has effectively skipped an entire model generation. So it’s 'see ya, Dacia Sandero' and 'how ya doin’, Renault Clio?', with the starting price jumping from £14k to £18k. Now the Ford Fiesta is dead and buried, there’s an enormous opportunity here.
As such, almost all of its buyers will be ‘conquests’ from other brands and MG expects there to be a lot of them: there are more 3s on the first boat over from the Nanjing factory in China than the brand sold in the whole of 2017.
Projected annual volume is 10,000 – just under half of what the omnipresent Toyota Yaris achieves.
MG claims volume is what enables it to undercut rivals by so much (the Clio and Yaris hybrids cost from £21k and £22k), but Toyota is by far the world’s biggest car maker, so the fact that MG is ultimately owned by the Chinese state might have more to do with it.
