MG 4

it's pretty much in line with what I expected. I'm coming from a saloon petrol car (so no battery to hide underneath) and it feels a tiny bit higher but not significant. It's noticeable that my toddler can see out from her child seat a bit better than before though.

Also, about rain. I only picked up the car yesterday so I'll comment after a proper shower. I'm not expecting any problems - most saloons don't have a rear wiper (Audi A4, BMW 3-series, etc. etc.) and no-one complains there so I'm sure it's fine, as I've had before.

Yes, the bottom "wires" on the rear windscreen are antennas. Presume it's another aerodynamic thing to reduce drag/improve range, rather than mounting them in a "fin" outside:

An update after the first four days with the car and a mix of short (2-5km) trips around town, and short-ish (10-20km) trips across the M50 in Dublin, this week which coincided with the wild rain and cold temps. I'm in an Excite long-range.

• Regen definitely is stronger than my test drive - great for town driving. It will still coast if you let off the brake pedal,so not completely one-pedal driving, and my brain is slowly dialling in to the distance it uses for slowing down over pressing the brake pedal. My wife who has never driven an electric before is also happy with it on its strongest setting which is a good sign. I haven't tried 'adaptive' yet.
• The heating: maybe I'm just used to colder temps but I find the heater is fine. Yes, it's roasting if set to 25 degrees, but it also provides heat at slightly lower temps: we've it set to 23 and it works fine.
• Heating the car this morning to defrost the window: very quick/fast.
• Car is currently showing 70% and 269km of range. (so I've only used up 30% since I got it). It started out showing 350-360km and 98%. That's relatively accurate estimates and great range considering it's been below 5 degrees most of this week?!
• Seating is excellent.
• It's very quiet at 100km/hr.
• Visibility out the front is very good and the nose is very short. Speaking of visibility and the rear window. I drove home in epic rain on Wednesday night and the rear window stayed clear. Whatever dark magic is being done there, I'm impressed.
• Boot: I've mentioned it before in previous posts but it's good but not great. A great boxy shape (and a step up in that respect from my previous saloon with the low boot), however, it's definitely.....cosy. I could see a holiday trip being an issue so I sure hope MG releases those roof bars soon before the summer. Again, this could be a personal thing as we carry a lot of sports gear, and also have travel cots, etc. to pack.
• Cruise-control, auto-steer (aka MG Pilot) : I tried it across the M50 on Wednesday night. It's slightly cautious for keeping distance from the car in front but it works very well, so long as you keep it in mind it's a machine with just some sensors to 'read/see' the road. It also is decent at staying in the middle of the lane and not 'bouncing' from side to side against each lane marker. Moving between lanes with it activated is also very easy: hold down (but not 'clicking it down') the indicator and the steering wheel comes into your control. Move across to the lane and let go of the indicator and it re-engages. Slick. It's good for accelerating/decelerating related to the car in front: I'd describe it as cautious but then again, maybe that's how we're all meant to drive and not on each other's rear bumper ;) As mentioned, I'm driving to Lahinch next week so looking forward to this assistance the longer drive.
• Cruise-control, auto-steer (aka MG Pilot) in the wet/wild weather on the way home. It definitely struggles in very (very) heavy rain. Again, I wouldn't really expect to use it in these sorts of conditions so this was purely a test. It's evident it struggles to 'see' the lane lines when the road is shiny from water and with water on the sensor (presumably).
• Stop-start cruise-control/auto-steer (aka MG Pilot) : this is excellent in town. Essentially you can just sit there and the car drives itself. Sometimes it seems to ask for a tap of the accelerator, other times it just pulls away but I like that - it keeps you aware so you don't completely switch off. The one piece which can slightly throw it off (but is way better than what I saw in the ZS which I test drove last year in the old model) is when the car in front is turning left out of your lane and a gap appears: in the ZS, it would sometimes dive forward before the car was fully gone so was getting confused by what car to follow. In the 4, it seems to have a better awareness of this and tracks much better. For anyone who knows the Naas Road coming into Dublin, the car drove itself from the M50 exit all the way to the Bluebell Luas stop where it got a bit confused where painted lines disappear and I took control: it even merged correctly at the Gowan building where the road goes from 2-lanes to one. I suspect I'll try another time and see if it can make it all the way into Inchicore when there's no other cars around and I can grab control if it fails.
• Auto-hold (for when you've stopped at lights and don't want to hold the brake pedal down) is great: press hard on the brake and it locks in. Weirdly it doesn't show any icon on screen so you just have to take your foot off the pedal and trust! This is standard on a lot of cars so nothing new, but just highlighting that there's no obvious icon on screen to tell you it's enabled. [UPDATE: Ignore - user error! It’s the (A) in the very middle of the screen 🤦‍♂️]
• We've been using CarPlay primarily: the screen resolution is excellent/bright/clear. In some ways I'm glad I don't have the Exclusive as the 360-degree camera seemed to have used cameras from the 1st iPhone in 2007 and smeared with jam! (in other ways, I'd love the 360-degree camera - no front parking sensors.....).
• CarPlay: 'hey Siri' is picked up very well and you can use that for setting up directions, etc. A neat feature I didn't know about is Apple Maps supports EV charging stations - very slick!
• The steering wheel functions.....I'll be honest, it'll take a while to brain-train myself. The left-hand joystick seems to depend on whether MG Pilot is activated or not. I think. And for some reason it doesn't seem intuitive to me on what left/right/up/down does on either. Thankfully there's dedicated volume controls on the dashboard otherwise I think my wife would be asking me to return the car!
• A noticeable miss on the buttons is lack of climate control up/down functions. There's buttons for heating the front and back windows, and an on/off for the climate control however, a temperature up/down would have been great (they do know the longest running argument between a male and female is over what is deemed hot or cold for a room? :). It would have meant you could leave the car in CarPlay and never have to leave it just to change the temps. Again, not a deal breaker but a nice to have.
• Sound system: it won't break any awards in a music review but it's a car with tons of other noises around externally so it's fine for me. I've got good speakers at home for when I want to hear good sound.
• The phone charging pad: I definitely won't miss that from an Exclusive. What a dumb design with no edges - phones just fly off it. Do they think people only drive on motorways?!
• Spec differences from the Excite to the Exclusive. Straight up from this first week, I can really only see myself missing the parking camera, and that's mainly as there is no front parking sensors. The rest of the features are 'nice-to-haves' for myself.
• Battery charging. The manual states to charge the car to 100% once per week. The menu in the car says to only charge to 100% for long-drives. What is it MG, care to tell us the recommended activity for battery health?! One note also: the MG manual also states that every 3-6 months to do a charge from <10% to 100% on a slow charger for additional re-balancing: I genuinely hope the car pops up a notification if this is the case as I've enough things in life to remember without this.

Overall, it's ticked all the boxes for us and more than happy. As my wife said, for 2-3 weeks of the year, and possibly a weekend or two, we'll wish we got the MG5 for the extra storage space (but on the flip side would have slightly less range and slower charging which isn't as good for long holiday drives...). But for the other 49-50 weeks of the year, the size of the car is much better in the city and she'll be happier driving it around.

Any other queries? let me know......

Has anyone who has put some milage up got the oil leak?

I was speaking to Johnson and Perrott in Cork about a week ago I ordered in early Dec. Sudan said they expect 76 vehicles to arrive in April /May not all mg4 but a lot are

Ordered last October, being told June/July but even that ETA isn't concrete.

Wow really? what configuration did you order?

I ordered an exclusive long range in grey first week of December from Frank Keane and was told twice that the timelines were looking positive for a Feb/Mar delivery. My email last week asking for an update has been ignored so I'm not very hopeful anymore. July would be an absolute disaster.

MG Ireland launch of the 4 was lottery they didn’t send car per peoples orders sent a bunch of different spec and let dealers sort them. I ordered in September and still waiting on white excite.

@Patser 😂🤦‍♂️ fixed!

I'm sure they'll do another model at some point in time - there's still MG7, MG8, etc. etc. etc.....

I've just moved from a saloon and glad to leave it - that shallow boot is always hassle for my own usage (which involves the odd large item).

Has there been any news on the MG4 Towbar at all? Last I heard I was coming in Q4 of 22, then Q1 of 23. I think there might be a 3rd party one around in the UK, but I'd be afraid to put one on in case it affects warranty.