MG ZST

Bargains. We love them. Can’t get enough of them. Except, it seems, in the automotive world. With most manufacturers heading upmarket with pricing if not necessarily the product to do it, MG is sticking to its guns. You’d forgive the now-Chinese company for thinking that’s a great opportunity to sit back and say, “This will do.” Cheap, reasonably cheerful, job done.

Commendably, it has not.

The MG ZS and I have a complicated relationship. The best I could say about the first one I drove was that it wasn’t all that bad and for the money, verging on good. I forgave the shortcomings of the ZS EV because, well, it was a full EV with, again, an unbeaten price. I knew, however, that like Hyundai and Kia before it and the Japanese makers before them, improvements were not just inevitable, they were approaching rapidly.

So in a market where MG is now a regular in the list of top ten best-selling car brands, the 2022 MG ZST must be doing something right. A hefty facelift of the original ZS compact SUV (which still soldiers on in basic Excite form for an astonishingly cheap $22,490 drive-away), the ZST comes in four specifications with a choice of two engine and transmission packages and a raft of improvements.

Pricing and Features

The four-strong ZST range starts at $25,490 for the 1.5-litre naturally-aspirated, CVT-driven Core. The turbo 1.3 makes its first appearance in the third car of the set, the $29,990 Excite and is also in the car I had for a week, the $32,990 Essence in Brighton Blue. All these prices are drive-away.

Trawling through the spec sheet, it’s not long before you discover that differences between the Excite and Essence are largely cosmetic.

The Essence has the sportiest of 17-inch wheel designs, a six-speaker stereo, power front seats with heating, PVC seat trim, auto LED headlights, auto wipers, huge double sunroof, air-conditioning, adaptive cruise control, rear parking sensors, keyless entry and start, front, side and reversing cameras, power windows and mirrors and a space-saver spare.

A digital dash is exclusive to the Essence and it’s actually quite good. I rather enjoyed the safety display that showed which way you might be drifting from your lane with a very Namco Final Lap arcade game vibe. The sunroof has a perforated cover, which doesn’t prevent much light from getting through and doesn’t stop much heat either.

There is plenty of bling across the range, so the top spec is distinguished by the alloys, MG embroidering in the seats and the sunroof. The Essence shares racy red brake calipers with the Excite.

A digital dash is exclusive to the Essence and it’s quite good. I rather enjoyed the safety display and its Namco Final Lap arcade game vibe

MG’s own software adorns an impressive-looking 10.1-inch touchscreen display, a rather better effort than the old ZS. It has sat-nav, Apple CarPlay and Android Auto and is very, very slow to operate, which is a bit of a shame. I often found myself hitting buttons twice to make things work only to find myself somewhere I didn’t want to be. Patience is the name of the game, but really, if you’re going to cram lots of things into the screen to cut down on buttons, make it fast. Also looking at you, Peugeot.

Having said that, the software is steadily improving over time and is looking better every time I see it. The hardware just needs a bit of sorting.

MG’s Pilot safety package comes with six airbags, the usual braking and stability systems, forward collision warning, forward auto emergency braking (AEB), lane departure warning, blind-spot monitoring and reverse cross-traffic alert as well as two ISOFIX points and three top-tether anchors for child seats.

ANCAP awarded the MG ZS four stars in 2017 but has not given an official rating for the ZST specifically. Curiously, the ZS EV has a five-star rating from November 2020 and I would venture that the ZST’s equipment level is closer to that car’s spec.

Comfort and Space

Being a compact SUV, the MG punches on with quite a few cars and as far as interior space goes, it’s somewhere in the middle. It’s not nearly as small as the Mazda CX-3 nor as expansive as the Nissan Qashqai or Kia Seltos.

The front seats are very comfortable and look pretty good with the bold MG embroidery. While I’m usually a fan of fake leather, an unusually honest description of the material in the spec sheet as “PVC” had me nodding in agreement when I first sat in them. And swearing in pain when I’d left the car out in the sun, projecting me back to my youth in the back seat of a 200B. Give me the cloth of the base level Core version any day. The sunroof and its paper-thin cover are partly to blame here.

Being a compact SUV, the MG punches on with quite a few cars and as far as interior space goes, it’s somewhere in the middle

When sitting behind my own driving position, rear legroom is pretty good for me at just under 180cm. The seat is high so taller folks will brush the sunroof cover, but again, for me it was pretty good. The middle seat is, of course, very tight but that’s par for the course in this size of car.

A quartet of USB ports – two in the front and two in the rear as well as an additional one on the rear-view mirror for a dashcam – keeps everything charged and ready to go.

The boot starts at a reasonable 359 litres, rising to 1187 with the 60:40 split-fold out of the way. Towing capacity is fairly meek at 500kg.

On the Road

One of the main differences on the Essence is the drivetrain, again shared with the Excite. MG’s 1.3-litre three-cylinder turbo sounds tiny – and it is – but it is reasonably powerful, delivering 115kW at a high-ish 5200-6200rpm and a solid 230Nm between 1800 and 4400rpm. Further sweetening the deal is the fact that a six-speed Aisin torque converter automatic shifts the gears and drives the front wheels rather than the entry-level engine’s CVT.

The turbo triple was developed in concert with General Motors so that’s reassuring.

It pulls quite willingly, but like the steering you’re best leaving the transmission in Sport mode as it creates a sense of urgency rather than slowly slushing away in the default setting. The transmission itself is reasonably well-calibrated and is a huge step up from when I first drove the ZS a few years ago.

The engine isn’t going to win any awards but does the job without complaint which, again, is par for the course in this segment.

There are still a few niggles. The driving position is high, which is fine, but the steering column is only adjustable for tilt and not reach, so I never really got completely comfortable with it. And on top of that, the wheel itself is offset to the left so you drive a bit crooked. Again, I guess it’s one of those things that you get used to.

At first, I found the steering itself way too light, but in the menu options you can select from three settings and I actually quite liked the firmest. My wife agreed that the extra weight made it much more agreeable and nicer to drive.

The engine pulls quite willingly, but like the steering you’re best leaving the transmission in Sport mode as it creates a sense of urgency

Another improvement is the way it rides. It’s still a bit harsh over sharper bumps and the rear end skips like most torsion-beam-suspended backsides do, but overall the ride has improved immensely.

It’s still not a big fan of corners with body roll and a gooey response on the brake pedal, but this really isn’t a key requirement of the target market and nobody in their right mind is buying an MG for whacky fun times.

The camera system is ambitious and quite clever. When you indicate in a particular direction, the screen shows a view down the side of the car so you know whether it’s clear or not when making a turn, kind of like Honda’s LaneWatch system. The image is a bit grainy but no worse than, say, a half-million-dollar McLaren.

The safety systems are a lot more comforting these days, too, with none of the frantic squawking at phantom obstacles of the past and no rage-quitting when you ignore the lane departure warning that hasn’t noticed you have your indicator on.

Ownership

MG offers a seven-year/unlimited-kilometre warranty, which is excellent going and only beaten (on a technicality) by Mitsubishi’s ten-year/150,000km offer. A roadside assistance package also runs for the length of the warranty.

The company also offers what it calls Precise Service Pricing, with the first seven services costing $2164 or an average of $309 each. There are a couple of scary jumps like the fourth and fifth visits but the pricing is close to, say, the Ford Puma but more expensive than a Toyota C-HR or Yaris Cross.

VERDICT

All in all, I’m very pleased with how much better the ZST has become. Bit by bit the company has knocked off the rougher edges, fixed what’s needed and made the ZST a much more appealing package.

While $32,990 drive-away puts it in the mix with a lot of very good cars, it’s definitely worth saving a few bucks and dropping back to the Excite if you don’t need a sunroof and digital dashboard.

MG sold nearly 19,000 examples of the ZS and ZST last year, so it’s a company on the march. The progressive improvement of the ZST, HS and ZS EV will probably start troubling other carmakers that have so far dismissed MG as a bargain and nothing else more threatening.

There’s still a way to go, but the distance to the competition from Japan and Korea is now much shorter.

2022 MG ZST specifications