MadaboutDana
Standard Member
- Joined
- Feb 7, 2023
- Messages
- 48
- Reaction score
- 118
- Points
- 29
- Location
- Cluny, France
- Driving
- MG4 Luxury
A short update on my own positive MG4 experience, just to offset some of the more irritating experiences reported in the forum...
A few months back I managed to reverse our MG4 into a culvert (yes, really, really stupid!). The bottom of the car was wedged on a large rock, the offside rear wheel left dangling over the culvert outlet... Not good! A couple of neighbours helped me pile rocks up under the dangling wheel, and then hauled the car out by hitching it to a lorry (yes, we have wonderful neighbours in our tiny French village!). I lay down to look at what I suspected would be a badly buckled underplate and possible damage to the suspension. Instead, I found... a couple of (very) slight scratches. I took it to the garage in any case, to double-check (our local MG dealership is, unlike many of the ones mentioned in the forum, exceptionally helpful and responsive), and after jacking it up on the platform, they reported that apart from the scratches, there was no damage whatsoever.
Then, a couple of weeks ago, I completely failed to spot a scenic rock positioned right next to a parking space at a local supermarket I don’t use very often. My turn was too tight, and with a ghastly rending sound, the car scraped against the amusingly pointy bit of scenic rock projecting into the parking space (thank you, landscape designers!). I leapt out and ran round to find that the wheel cover had been scraped off and one alloy spoke gouged. As for the rear passenger door... well, actually, the bottom plastic lining had been pushed in by a couple of inches, but the steel door itself appeared to be opening and closing okay, with no obvious structural damage.
Anxious about invisible damage, I took it round to the garage, and in just a few minutes they pushed out the plastic lining, which has barely a scratch, and showed me that the wheel cover (which I had bunged into the back of the car in the assumption that it had been totally trashed) was actually undamaged apart from a couple of dramatic scrapes – to my amazement, the clips were perfectly okay and the cover itself uncracked. They also confirmed that the wheel was fine (no structural damage apart from the gouge, no misalignment). There’s an almost invisible scratch along the very bottom part of the doorframe (also black plastic, so hard to see), and I have ordered a new wheel cover for purely aesthetic reasons. But the lack of damage compared to e.g. the Vauxhall Zafira I had the same experience with many years ago was truly extraordinary – the latter required a new passenger door.
The quotes for replacing the plastic door lining, lower plastic doorframe lining and wheel cover were very modest; in the end, I only replaced the wheel cover, because it’s the only thing that really shows any damage.
I am reassured! The car really does live up to its 5-star NCAP rating.
A few months back I managed to reverse our MG4 into a culvert (yes, really, really stupid!). The bottom of the car was wedged on a large rock, the offside rear wheel left dangling over the culvert outlet... Not good! A couple of neighbours helped me pile rocks up under the dangling wheel, and then hauled the car out by hitching it to a lorry (yes, we have wonderful neighbours in our tiny French village!). I lay down to look at what I suspected would be a badly buckled underplate and possible damage to the suspension. Instead, I found... a couple of (very) slight scratches. I took it to the garage in any case, to double-check (our local MG dealership is, unlike many of the ones mentioned in the forum, exceptionally helpful and responsive), and after jacking it up on the platform, they reported that apart from the scratches, there was no damage whatsoever.
Then, a couple of weeks ago, I completely failed to spot a scenic rock positioned right next to a parking space at a local supermarket I don’t use very often. My turn was too tight, and with a ghastly rending sound, the car scraped against the amusingly pointy bit of scenic rock projecting into the parking space (thank you, landscape designers!). I leapt out and ran round to find that the wheel cover had been scraped off and one alloy spoke gouged. As for the rear passenger door... well, actually, the bottom plastic lining had been pushed in by a couple of inches, but the steel door itself appeared to be opening and closing okay, with no obvious structural damage.
Anxious about invisible damage, I took it round to the garage, and in just a few minutes they pushed out the plastic lining, which has barely a scratch, and showed me that the wheel cover (which I had bunged into the back of the car in the assumption that it had been totally trashed) was actually undamaged apart from a couple of dramatic scrapes – to my amazement, the clips were perfectly okay and the cover itself uncracked. They also confirmed that the wheel was fine (no structural damage apart from the gouge, no misalignment). There’s an almost invisible scratch along the very bottom part of the doorframe (also black plastic, so hard to see), and I have ordered a new wheel cover for purely aesthetic reasons. But the lack of damage compared to e.g. the Vauxhall Zafira I had the same experience with many years ago was truly extraordinary – the latter required a new passenger door.
The quotes for replacing the plastic door lining, lower plastic doorframe lining and wheel cover were very modest; in the end, I only replaced the wheel cover, because it’s the only thing that really shows any damage.
I am reassured! The car really does live up to its 5-star NCAP rating.
