MG3 Review (2013-present)

If the name MG brings up idyllic images of classic two-seater sports cars chuntering around a bucolic vision of the British countryside, you’re probably not alone. Trouble is, these days MG Motor is a British brand almost in name only; it’s owned by a Chinese car company called SAIC, and in place of the pretty little drop-tops, it now sells bargain-basement hatchbacks and SUVs.

The MG 3 is the cheapest of the lot. It’s a supermini, which means it’s a small hatchback about the size of the Vauxhall Corsa, Renault Clio or Volkswagen Polo, though its budget bent means its most direct rivals include the Dacia Sandero and Suzuki Swift.

The MG3 certainly isn’t a high performance hot hatch in the mould of the Ford Fiesta ST or Hyundai i20 N, but there is still a little of the brand’s old spark in the way that it drives. Think of it more as a budget runaround with a sporty edge and you might be pleasantly surprised.

Space inside the MG 3 is reasonable, with plenty of headroom and legroom on offer in both the front- and rear seats, and there's also a decent-sized boot. It's no Skoda Fabia, but there'll be enough practicality for most supermini buyers. It isn’t hard to see where the cost savings have been made, though. Climb aboard, and you’ll find some fairly low-rent plastics scattered throughout the interior, together with a fairly creaky infotainment system.

To be fair, MG facelifted the 3 in 2018, and this brought a marked improvement in quality, although you still shouldn’t expect even the newest examples to be up there with their more mainstream rivals. A quick prod of the dashboard plastics reveals they’re flimsy and feel cheap to the touch. Earlier cars, meanwhile, have even more rough edges.

New or old, the 3 feels pretty dated when you get it out on the road. The main culprit is the engine, an old-fashioned 1.5-litre petrol which, unlike most of its newer rivals, does without a turbocharger, and consequently feels quite lethargic unless it’s pushed hard. The trouble is, it’s also very noisy, and creates a lot of vibration, so you’re always deterred from extracting its fullest performance by the din it makes when you do so.

What’s more, the vague clutch and notchy five-speed gearbox combine to make the 3 tricky to drive smoothly, so it isn’t the most pleasant companion around town, and that’s a problem given that that’s exactly where most of these superminis will spend the majority of their lives.

The 3’s ride is pretty firm, too; at low speeds, the MG 3 never settles down, jiggling you unremittingly over even smooth-looking pieces of urban tarmac and clunking into potholes. Out on the motorway, it doesn’t improve, either. Try to undertake a long trip in the 3, and the incessant jostling will drive you spare before long.

There is a payoff for that firm ride, though, and you’ll notice it when you come to a corner, because the MG is really quite good fun to chuck around. Granted, it doesn’t feel as sporty or as polished as a Ford Fiesta, but the nose reacts quickly and directly to inputs on the steering wheel, and there’s plenty of grip on offer.

Overall, it’s important to view the MG3 in the context of its price. Other superminis may be more accomplished, but it costs thousands of pounds less than most of its rivals, and it has a sense of fun that’s often in short supply at this budget-focused end of the market.

There’s just one engine – a 1.5-litre four-cylinder – and two trim specs to choose from. Excite is relatively spartan inside, but it does come with an 8-inch touchscreen infotainment system, Apple CarPlay and rear parking sensors. Upgrade to Exclusive Nav and you’ll get cruise control, sports seats and satellite navigation.

The touchscreen system is a bit slow and clunky compared to those in the MG’s more expensive rivals. Sports seats and an improved audio system do help to lift the ambience somewhat inside, and the £1,700 premium you’ll pay for the higher trim spec isn’t unreasonable, but it does push the MG’s price closer to its big-name competitors.

You can expect to see around 40 mpg in the real world from the MG3's petrol engine, which might not seem too bad on the face of it. Having said that, this engine’s old technology means it lags behind its rivals in terms of fuel economy: all of them will get significantly better fuel consumption figures, and their lower CO2 emissions mean they make more sense as company cars.

Watch out for servicing costs, too, because they’re surprisingly pricey. Both interim and major services will cost you quite a bit more than they will on rival cars; indeed, some of the MG3’s servicing prices are more what you’d associate with those from a premium manufacturer. On the plus side, the 3 uses a metal timing chain that should last the life of the car, rather than a rubber cam belt that needs regular – and costly – replacement.

And while the MG3 is cheap to buy, you’ll also want to bear in mind you won’t get much cash back when the time comes to sell it on, either. The 3 isn’t in high demand on the second hand market, which means values are pretty low, so you might actually lose less cash by buying a more expensive rival that you’ll then be able to sell on for a bit more than the 3 when the time comes.

The MG3 has been with us for nearly a decade, but it has always sold in fairly low volumes in the UK. As a result of that it’s very hard to get concrete reliability data, because the sample sizes in reliability surveys are just too small. With that in mind, we can’t say for sure whether the 3 will be reliable or not, although at least on newer cars you get that long warranty to bring some peace of mind.

Having said that, we have heard reports of the 3’s engine timing chain being less than reliable, and some owners have suffered quite significant engine damage as a result. It’s important, therefore, to check there are no issues with the timing chain, which you can sometimes do by listening for a rattle as - or just after - the car is started. Be warned, though, that this problem can rear its head without any warning at all.