MG HS long-term test: report 5
Our sub-editor wants a spacious, comfortable and economical car for his long daily commute. Will he feel short changed by MG's bargain-priced family SUV?...
The car MG HS 1.5 T-GDI DCT Trophy Run by Chris Haining, sub-editor
Why it’s here To see whether MG's family SUV is a genuine bargain, or a car whose low price leads to too many compromises
Needs to be comfy and relaxing on a long motorway commute without costing the Earth on petrol; offer the practicality an action-packed life demands
Mileage 6234 List price £28,995 Target Price £27,689 Price as tested £29,495 Official fuel economy 37.2 mpg Test fuel economy 42.7 mpg
18 June 2025 – Driven to distraction
Who doesn’t love when your expectations are exceeded? A ring doughnut that turns out not to be just a solid torus of dough but to actually have jam running through it. An insurance company that says “your premium has gone down this year.” And now, the parking sensors on my MG HS.
My motoring career has been long enough that I’ve watched the very evolution of parking sensors. First came the handy beeping with increasing frequency as the car’s extremities grew closer to something solid. Next came the idea of graphically augmenting that warning with a series of amber and red lights. The first time I witnessed this, in a Mercedes-Benz S-Class, my young mind was blown.
More recently, with the arrival of 360-degree cameras, those amber and red warning lights have given way to a virtual depiction of the ‘danger zone’ superimposed over the view behind or in front of you. And that’s what my MG HS has. But there’s more!Not only does the beeping get increasingly angrier as the distance decreases; it even gives you a countdown – in centimetres – of exactly how far you can go until disaster. It’s a brilliant idea, especially in tight situations – such as on my drive – where every inch really does count. It’s a shame, then, that the safety margin it suggests is optimistic by a good few centimetres, but it’s the thought that counts.
And it’s a lot better thought out than the HS’s driver monitoring systems, two of which – fatigue monitoring and driver attention monitoring – I have to disable via the infotainment screen every time I start the car. They’re just way too sensitive and give rise to more annoying bings and bongs than the album version of Tubular Bells.
In the HS, as with the BYD Atto 3 I ran a year ago, a dash-mounted camera tracks the driver’s eyes. If they wander from the road ahead for too long, the car issues a stern admonishment – a loud ding and a “pay attention to the road” warning on the instrument cluster.
That’s fair enough; I’m very much in favour of undistracted driving. But when my car tells me off for my eyes lingering on the sat nav display or – ridiculously – the passenger-side door mirror for more than a few seconds, it becomes an unwelcome distraction in itself. Sometimes the cure is worse than the ailment.
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