Motor Trader The award-winning and longest running UK magazine for car retailing professionals. Your first stop for News, Jobs and Reports for the motor industry.
MG dealers eagerly awaiting the brand’s new entry into the mushrooming compact SUV market have been given a further major selling point – the MG ZS will offer a seven-year warranty.
MG’s newcomer arrives in dealerships in November, expanding the brand’s currently available UK models to three. Having debuted at the London Motor Show in the summer as the XS, the model now revives the GS designation previously applied to an MG version of the Rover 45 in the early 2000s.
The ZS is a B-SUV that will sit in the MG range alongside its larger GS sister, and compete in by far the most competitive sector on the UK market – many predict B SUV sales to double by 2020, and a swathe of new models have launched into the sector in 2017 alone.
MG will need to attract buyers to the ZS and away from a whole host of competitors ranging from the mass-selling Nissan Juke to the budget-rivalling SsangYong Tivoli. However the brand’s management believes an MG ZS selling price starting from only £12,495 and now the seven-year warranty will bring customers to the brand’s dealerships.
“This is MG putting its money where its mouth is – with the introduction of a seven-year warranty, we are making a clear statement of intent about the quality of our design, engineering and manufacturing,” says MG Motor UK head of sales and marketing Matthew Cheyne.
MG’s is not the first seven-year warranty on the market, Kia having launched its scheme back in 2010, and the MG programme only covers 80,000 miles, whereas Kia offers a 100,000-mile limit.
Like the Kia programme the MG warranty is transferable to a new owner if the car is sold, and guarantees that any parts required under the warranty will be genuine MG items.
MG insists that it is an extension of then manufacturer warranty and not an insurance-based product. There will be no reduction of protection, and in addition a six-year anti-perforation warranty will continue to be offered as standard.
There is no indication yet as to whether the warranty programme will be extended to other models in the MG range – currently the MG GS offers a five-year factory warranty while that on the MG3 supermini is only three years.
The MG ZS will be offered with 1-litre 125hp turbo and 1.5-litre 120hp petrol engines, manual and auto transmissions and three trim levels. It will also debut a new design language for the brand designed to appear more contemporary amongst rivals.
