It was, for quite a while, New Zealand’s cheapest new car, complete with a 7-year warranty and 7 years of Roadside Assistance. Perhaps for those reasons, most buyers ignored that the car was an older design and were happy with their new cheap and cheerful MG3.
In 2022, we drove one from Auckland to Wellington, well out of its comfort zone, to prove you don’t need anything too fancy to do that long haul. How did it go? Better than expected, even with its 4-speed automatic gearbox.
In June of this year, we went to the launch of the all-new MG3, and MG asked us if we’d like to repeat the Auckland to Wellington test again. We never turn down a road trip, so that was locked in. We managed to extend the review time to a few weeks so Pete from DriveLife could also spend over a week behind the wheel commuting, and doing daily life things.
How will the new MG3 go, over 1,500km and two reviewers?
What We Like and Dislike About The 2024 MG3 Essence Hybrid+
| What we like | What we don’t like |
| Features for the price 3-speed automatic ok in normal use Fun little car to drive Performance Ride quality Overall comfort levels Tight turning circle | Tyre noise on coarse-chip seal Lane departure warning Lots of beeps Loud indicators Cruise control a little jerky |
What’s In The 2024 MG3 Range?
- Excite Petrol $25,990
- Essence Petrol $27,990
- Excite Hybrid+ $29,990
- Essence Hybrid+ $31,990
So you get two choices; hybrid or not, Excite or Essence.
The Petrol models are powered by a 1.5-litre, 4-cylinder petrol engine that has outputs of 81kW of power and 142Nm of torque. It’s mated to a CVT automatic transmission and has a fuel rating of 6.0L/100km.
The Hybrid+ also has a 1.5-litre engine, but it’s actually a different engine – although still 4-cylinders. The petrol engine in this model combined with the hybrid system means 155kW of power and 250Nm of torque, and this model has a “Hybrid transmission” that we know from the launch is a 3-speed automatic transmission. The Hybrid+ is rated for 4.3L/100km for fuel economy.
Both Petrol and Hybrid+ are front-wheel drive, and the Petrol model uses 91 octane fuel, while the Hybrid+ requires 95 or higher. Fuel tank capacity of the Petrol model is 45 litres, while the Hybrid+ reduces this to 36 litres.
2024 MG3 Colour Range
There’s no cost to change the colour of your new MG3. The options are:
- Pastel Yellow
- Dover White
- Sloane Silver Metallic
- Black Pearl Metallic
- Hampstead Grey Metallic
- Diamond Red Metallic
- Brighton Blue Metallic
For a full list of specs and options available for the 2024 MG3 Essence Hybrid+ head on over to MG New Zealand’s website.
How Does The 2024 MG3 Essence Hybrid+ Compare To Its Competition?
With the removal of the Kia Rio and Hyundai i20 range (except for the i20N), there’s not too much choice these days for a smaller hatchback. We’ve included the Mazda2, even though it’s not a hybrid its fuel rating is not much more than the MG3 or Suzuki Swift.
There’s no doubt the MG3 wins the power and torque contest in our chart.
| Make/ Model | Engine | Power/ Torque kW/Nm | Seats | Fuel L/100km | Boot Space litres | Price |
| Toyota Yaris ZR Hybrid | 1.5-litre, 4-cylinder petrol-hybrid | 85/180 | 5 | 3.0 | 270 | $38,990 |
| Honda Jazz | 1.5-litre, 4-cylinder petrol-hybrid | 90/235 | 5 | 3.8 | 304 | $37,000 |
| Mazda2 Limited | 1.5-litre, 4-cylinder petrol | 81/142 | 5 | 5.0 | 250 | $32,590 |
| MG3 Hybrid+ Essence | 1.5-litre, 4-cylinder petrol-hybrid | 155/250 | 5 | 4.3 | 293 | $31,990 |
| Suzuki Swift RSC Hybrid | 1.2-litre, 3-cylinder petrol-hybrid | 61/112 | 5 | 4.3 | 265 | $29,990 |
Please note that DriveLife does its best to ensure the information above is correct at the time of publication, however, prices, specifications and models can change over time. Please bear that in mind when comparing models in the comparison table.
First Impressions Of The 2024 MG3 Essence Hybrid+
While the new MG3 is pleasing to the eye, I still struggle to see anything new or unique; it feels like the MG designers have looked at other cars and then modelled part of the new MG3 on those. The front reminds me of the previous gen Corolla with some Peugeot influence, while the rear is reminiscent of the Mazda2.
So while the MG3 struggles to present its own look, it still should please buyers who don’t want anything outlandish or with a massive in-your-face grille, and a contemporary and ‘safe’ look is what those buyers are looking for. The MG3 hits the markers on those fronts.
Such a shame our test car was finished in silver; sure, it looked just fine, but in the new MG3 range is a stunning yellow, while the metallic blue and red options also look excellent. Small cars suit brighter colours.
What’s The Interior Like In The 2024 MG3 Essence Hybrid+?
Again, nothing outlandish in the interior either, and the MG3 feels like home. It’s simple and while it may be a ‘cheaper’ car, still manages to exude a little bit of luxury as well as functionality. Some of that perceived luxury is around the materials used in the cabin; nothing expensive, but a nice variation of different fabrics and textures means it certainly does not feel cheap.
The interior is all black, not something you ever get away from in a small, cheap hatchback, but there is some nice orange contrasting stitching on the dash and seats. There’s a small electric sunroof as well, with a manual blind. This helped let in some natural light in during the mid-winter testing of our MG3.
On the dash, there are physical buttons for a few controls like defrosting the front or rear windscreen, and another AC button will bring up the full menu on the centre screen, so at least those controls you need in a hurry like window demisting are right there on the dash.
Those in the front seats have access to a single USB-A and USB-C port (thank you, MG, for continuing to have both) and there’s reasonable storage space in the centre console. Actually, overall there’s a good amount of storage space for a small hatchback, although there are no bottle holders in the doors, which is a shame.
Sitting in the driver’s seat, the leather flat-bottomed steering wheel feels great in your hands. The steering wheel is a hexagonal shape, and this shape is repeated by the large MG badge in the centre of the wheel. It’s very nicely executed and while you might think a hexagonal steering wheel will feel weird, it doesn’t.
There’s no electric adjustment of the seats, and that wasn’t expected anyway, but I was hopeful for heated front seats…but, no. We went through some freezing days during our time in the MG3, so heated seats would have been excellent (or maybe I’m just getting too soft).
Rear-seat room is pretty reasonable, and headroom all around is not too bad either. Keep in mind this is a small hatchback, so don’t set your expectations too high. The rear seat is not split, so if you have something larger to put in the boot, there’s nothing you can do but fold the entire rear seat down.
At 293 litres, the boot is slightly smaller than the last generation of MG3, and now has the 12-volt battery under the floor. There’s a bit more storage under the floor too, but no spare – just a 12-volt pump, and there’s a safety triangle that lives in the boot area – always nice to know there is one.
What’s The 2024 MG3 Essence Hybrid+ Like To Drive?
On picking up our test car in Auckland, the range was showing an excellent 775km – damn fine for a car with a 36-litre fuel tank. But that range would be worked out on town driving, where a hybrid excels. We’ll see the real-world range when the car is used on the open road.
Pairing up my phone’s Bluetooth connection took all of 30 seconds, always a good start to a car review. I did bind the car to the MG app on my phone, and this took less than 2 minutes. But I could never get the app to work properly, and the “find my car” option always said Namadgi National Park, Australia. Likewise, none of the other MG app options worked for me, but most likely this was an issue with the app on my phone and/or our specific test car.
I went to use Apple CarPlay, but while the MG3 has both USB-A and USB-C ports in the front, you can only use the USB-A port for Apple CarPlay (and, I expect, Android Auto). Plugging in a USB-A cord to my iPhone and CarPlay still would not work, and wouldn’t work for me for my entire time with the car.
So instead, I used the MG3’s SatNav, which is a doddle to use anyway. It showed a 5.5-hour drive to Hawera, my first stop to work on our project car for the weekend. With Auckland sunny but sitting on 5 degrees, I hit the road.
At the launch, we were all a little surprised to hear that the new MG3 has gone from a 4-speed automatic gearbox to a 3-speed. I think we all expected it to have at least a 6-speed automatic. During the launch, the 3-speed felt okay around town and also on the motorway, but that’s not enough driving to see what it’s really going to be like – so this trip would be perfect for seeing if MG has made a mistake in fitting the car with one less gear in the gearbox. They do call it a “Hybrid Transmission” although I couldn’t really find out too much info about that. Like at the launch, driving around Auckland’s suburbs and city, it feels ok. Time to hit the motorway and open road.
At 100km/h, the engine is nicely quiet and is but a hum in the background and although MG told us that the EV side of the hybrid system only works up to around 80km/h, even at 100km/h the MG3 will sometimes run in EV mode.
The dashboard is nicely crisp in resolution, and while there’s no customisation, you can switch the trip computer between a few screens, including a small power flow diagram so you can see what is keeping the car moving, or when brake regeneration is charging up the battery pack. While using the car’s SatNav for directions, no instructions are shown in the dashboard, but the centre screen’s instructions are very clear with nice, big intersection graphics when you get close to a motorway interchange (for example).
Ride quality on the new MG3 is a real surprise; it’s not easy to get a small, light car to ride well, but overall the MG3 certainly does. Even my occasional passengers mentioned this aspect of the car.
Hitting the Waikato in winter meant 2 degrees outside, and the MG3 giving me ice warning alerts. It still feels good on the road, it sits well and is already proving to be a far more refined car than the model it replaces.
Wind noise is reasonably well controlled and while generally tyre noise is also well controlled, when you hit coarse chip seal, they really sing. I’d be looking to replace those tyres with another brand once they wore out.
Like the dashboard, the centre screen has great resolution too and is very responsive to the touch – lag times are low. I love an infotainment system that has a ‘proper’ home screen. Some systems still allow you to look at just one thing, a map or media for example. But on the MG3, the home screen is split into 3 sections; I changed our test car’s screen to show SatNav, AC, and Audio. The AC section of the home screen allows you to change the temperature, fan speed, or turn on recirculating air. Having this right there on the home screen is brilliant, and I rarely went into the full AC screen – there was no need to.
Time to start playing with the drive modes. Like many cars, you get three drive modes in your MG3; Eco, Normal, Sport. They act as you’d expect, and using Eco mode is easy since with the hybrid system, there’s plenty of performance. When I could, I set the car to Eco mode, although like most other cars, the MG3 doesn’t remember this each time you start it.
Speaking of performance, be prepared to be surprised; the little MG3 hybrid can really move it when needed, getting to 100km/h in 8 seconds. Flooring the car will see the EV system kick in first, then once the petrol engine is up and revving out, you get a great burst of acceleration. I wouldn’t say it’s a Jekyll and Hyde type of car, but you can’t ignore that the MG3 uses its 155kW of power to the max. It’s fun to drive, especially when overtaking and the petrol engine really kicks in.
So what about the 3-speed automatic on the open road? It is mostly masked by the hybrid system, so don’t think you are going to get a 1980s 3-speed automatic experience. Most drivers will barely notice the car has a 3-speed automatic, although for some weird reason, when going up a hill and it kicks into second gear, it holds that gear for far too long – even when you’ve crested the hill and are now on flat road. Sometimes I eased off the gas to force the car to change up into third gear, as it felt like it simply would not. This can’t be good for fuel consumption, but I’m sure the MG engineers have done this for a reason.
Since I was driving exactly the same route as I had in 2022 in an MG3, that meant a drive through the Awakino Gorge. On a weekday, there was little traffic, which was fine with me. In 2022, the little MG3 was a lot of fun on this road, although I really had to work hard to make the car get around corners smoothly and quickly. Come the 2024 model, and it’s a lot easier. The car does very well on this windy road, and is far more neutral in its handling than I thought it would be. The car does not like mid-corner bumps, unsettling it a little, but it loves the longer bends, and steering feedback is quite reasonable. When I consider that this is primarily a city runabout, the handling on the little MG3 is pretty damn good.
After arriving in Hawera for a weekend of throwing spanners around on our project car, I filled up the MG3 for the drive home. My real-world range ended up at 600km and the car had returned 5.6L/100km so far. I’m happy with those numbers and expect this should drop once we start using the car around Wellington city, where it’s going to be more economical.
As far as EV driving is concerned, the MG3 will automatically switch between the following modes as it sees fit:
- EV – Running on electric-only power for as long as charge allows
- Series – Engine runs through to the generator, which powers the electric motor for drive
- Series and Charge – Series driving, plus topping-up the battery when under low-load
- Drive and Charge – Engine drives the wheels, while also charging the battery through the generator
- Parallel – Both engine and electric motor power the wheels
It’s a great way of keeping it simple, just get in and drive and let the car control the hybrid side of driving. That 1.5-litre engine does the job and is more refined than the last generation’s engine. Most of the time it’s quite quiet and smooth, although if you rev it out past 4,000rpm it can get noisy.
The hybrid side of things in the MG3 is pretty simple; it’s a 1.83kWh battery pack that assists with driving, but it’s not a plug-in hybrid. You just drive it and the petrol engine will charge the battery pack while driving. Going downhill means you can use regenerative braking (regen) to get some ‘free’ charge into the battery pack, too. There are three settings for regen, Low, Medium, High. You can set this via the infotainment system, however, someone had wisely set the right-hand Favourite button on the steering wheel to adjust regen, so it was a simple tap of that button to cycle through the three modes. The highest mode is not quite one-pedal driving, but it’s pretty strong all the same. Low regen is almost coasting, matching a normal automatic car. The car will always default to Medium regen when you start it.
Maybe it was the same person who set the left-hand favourite button on the steering wheel to go to the car’s settings. This means you could quickly turn off annoying things, like Lane Departure Warning. Like most other Chinese brands, Lane Departure Warning on the MG3 is annoying, beeping at you regularly, before your tyres have even touched the line. As mentioned, MG is not alone in this, but how I wish they would do testing outside of China on other country’s roads, so they can fine-tune such systems before launching a model.
The steering wheel controls are excellent, simple to use and operate without having to look down. Special mention goes to the joystick/toggles on each side of the wheel, that work so well. This is one place where the MG3 outshines the Mercedes-BENZ GLE, a car that costs over 5 times as much. The right-hand joystick on the MG3 does volume (up/down) and track/station select (left/right). Pushing the joystick in mutes the volume. So simple and effective. The left-hand joystick controls the adaptive cruise control functions. Speaking of steering wheels, the turning circle in the MG3 is super tight. Sure, it’s a small hatchback, but it’s still very good at 10.4 metres.
There are normal stalks on either side of the steering wheel for indicators and wipers etc, and mention has to be made of the indicators; every single passenger mentioned just how loud they are. Not deafening, but oh-so loud.
While the new MG3 has adaptive cruise control, it’s not the smoothest system out there. It does the job, but can feel a little jerky at times. All MG3s also have steering assist, but this too is a little jerky and can have the car wandering in its lane if you don’t hold the steering wheel with enough grip. Neither of the issues are bad, but something to be aware of.
There are a few other niggles with the MG3 that I found; traffic sign recognition is not too accurate, sometimes missing clear speed limit signs. The steering wheel doesn’t telescope, it only tilts; again, nothing major but one of those things that some car buyers expect in 2024. In saying that, I found the driving position to be very good overall, with well-placed pedals.
To complete the list of things I’d like to see changed, you can’t lock the car with the headlights still on. I’m used to every other car turning the headlights off automatically, but with the MG3 you have to go back to the car and manually turn them off. Lastly, sometimes when using the transmission dial to move from Park into Drive, the gearbox would go into Neutral. It didn’t happen a lot, but it always caught me out.
Weirdly, you can’t use any of the voice commands to do anything unless you are using Apple CarPlay or Android Auto, and even then, you can only use the USB-A port to connect your phone. So, while there is a USB-C port next to the USB-A port, CarPlay or Auto will not work. It means having another cable to do that, and it’d be nice if both ports worked for mirroring your phone.
So, what about fuel consumption for our 1,500km of driving? While MG states the combined rating is 4.3L/100km, we managed 5.4L/100km. When you consider a large portion of our driving was on the open road, that real-world result is very good. It’s around towns and cities where a hybrid really comes into its own as far as fuel consumption goes. In our last review, over 1,200km of driving we got 7.2L/100km out of the MG3, so that 5.4 result is a great improvement.
PETER’S POINT OF VIEW
When I picked up the car from Fred, he had driven it mainly on the open road. For me, it would be commuting and family transport, staying close to home. I found it an easy car to live with, small, nippy and cheap to run. The acceleration is much stronger than I expected, coming from a complex mix of the hybrid motive powers. I was also impressed with the drive and handling, which is surprisingly good. It handles the bumps predictively, inspires confidence in the corners and has an easily accessed turn of speed. And the bonus is that enjoying driving does not overly harm fuel efficiency.
There is no disguising that it is a small car, but it catered for our family of four well, even the back seat easily accommodated six-footers. In terms of flexibility, one downside for me is not having a split rear seat. This effectively means that when loading oversized luggage, the whole backseat folds as one, and the car is then restricted to only the driver and one passenger.
The sunroof is on the small side, great for daylight to enter an otherwise dark interior, but it does eat into the available headroom. Luckily for me, there is more than enough seat height adjustment to give me enough clearance. On opening the sunroof at or above around 80 km/h, a very unpleasant pressure pulsing occurred making us want to close it quickly. Changing the speed didn’t seem to improve this much.
Using some of the smart features, I found the adaptive cruise control worked okay, however the lane assist has a tendency to overreact. Like Fred, I was impressed with the low level of engine noise that came into the cabin. It was quite a refined drive that combined with the handling, resulted in a car that felt more up-market than its price.
The heating and ventilation system have some quick keys that are great for basic functions like clearing the windows, but I am not a fan of the fine controls being through the infotainment screen. If you are using Android Auto, that takes over the infotainment and you have to go out of this into The “car” mode to make changes in settings. You can pre-program a couple of the steering wheel buttons to be quick launch functions into the infotainment system, and this works well.
Android Auto only works via cable connection and while it generally worked OK, it did have the occasional drop-out at times.
It’s always interesting to check the accuracy of a car’s speedo against a GPS app on my phone. In most cars, they overestimate the speed by a few km’s, and that keeps you safe. In the MG3, it was super accurate, most of the time it was spot on the GPS speed. So, note to self, don’t bank on there being any margin!
Using the car across a mix of around-town commuting and some open-road driving, I was very impressed with its fuel efficiency. The car regularly showed a fuel consumption of around 3.3 to 4.5 l/100km after some 10 to 20 kilometres. While the car requires the more expensive 95 octane petrol, it is unlikely to use enough to get too damaging on the wallet.
In summing up, it feels like the MG3 for a small and good value car, is doing a good job delivering some of the character the MG brand is famous for.
2024 MG3 Essence Hybrid+ – Specifications
| Vehicle Type | 5-door small hatchback |
| Starting Price | $31,990 |
| Price as Tested | $31,990 |
| Engine | 1.5-litre, 4-cylinder petrol with hybrid assist |
| Power, Torque kW/Nm (combined) | 155/250 |
| Transmission | 3-speed “hybrid automatic” |
| Spare Wheel | Pump only |
| Kerb Weight, Kg | 1,308 |
| Length x Width x Height mm | 4113x1797x1502 |
| Boot Space / Cargo Capacity, Litres (seats up/seats down) | 293/983 |
| Fuel tank capacity, litres | 36 |
| Fuel Economy, L/100km | Advertised Spec – Combined – 4.3 Real-World Test – Combined – 5.4 Low Usage: 0-6 / Medium Usage 6-12 / High Usage 12+ |
| Towing Capacity Kg, unbraked/braked | 500 |
| Turning circle metres | 10.4 Small: 6-10m / Medium 10-12m / Large 12m+ |
| Warranty | 10 years, 250,000 km warranty 7 year battery warranty 7 years Roadside Assist |
| Safety information | ANCAP Rating – not rated yet Rightcar.govt.nz – 4 Stars – NEWMG3 |
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