MG IM6 (2025 - ) Electric review

While priced competitively no IM6 dips below the £40,000 “expensive car” tax threshold, meaning you and/or subsequent owners will cop for the extra £421 a year in ‘road tax’ (aka VED for the pedants) for the first five years following registration. Which is a pain, especially when rivals like the Kia EV6 and Hyundai Ioniq 5 both have options just ducking that higher rate. True, they won’t be as fast or well-equipped as the MG. But it’ll still be a chunk off the monthly payments, whether you’re financing or leasing. Beyond that it’s the usual story for electric cars, the fleet and company buyers MG’s move upmarket is intended to attract scoring the usual savings in Benefit In Kind while facility to home charge will claw back some costs in ‘fuel’ over doing it on public points.

We’ll call this a holding score for now, for the fact the cars we drove were pre-production and had a few teething troubles MG assures us will be sorted before customers take delivery. The fact this can be done remotely and ‘over the air’ rather than with need to visit a dealership like other MGs comes thanks to the IM5’s more up-to-date tech. Like the rest of the range, it’s also covered with a confidence-inspiring seven-year warranty.

Another holding score we’ll revisit when we’ve driven an IM6 representative of those customers can actually buy. This for the fact the cars we tested still had some fine-tuning pending for the many and various driver aids to address intrusive nagging from the face-scanning driver attention monitor and heavy-handed lane-keeping interventions. If, as promised, this is all sorted out we’d take some confidence in the range of assistance tech included as standard. Which, given how much power the top model has, is probably for the best…

Cars like the IM6 designed from the start as electric vehicles are at an advantage for the fact there can be more space between the wheels for both batteries and occupants. This wheelbase measurement is an important consideration if practicality is important to you, and without throwing too many numbers at you the MG’s is on the longer end of the spectrum, meaning tons of rear legroom and a nice flat floor so even middle-seat passengers in the back have somewhere to put their feet. The boot is also usefully much bigger than the IM5 saloon. While still a very Chinese twist on premium the IM6 is squishy where it matters and a little more homely than a Model Y, double glazing keeping the noise down on motorways while the long wheelbase also means great stability. The Launch Edition cars we drove also had air suspension, allowing for various settings or ride heights for different situations. This felt much more comfortable than the standard set-up in the IM5, and more capable of taming the sometimes violent power delivery of the Performance model. Worth the extra money in our book, even if it ends being a cost option on other versions of the IM6.

Quicker to ask what the IM6 doesn’t have rather than what it does, given the incredibly generous kitlist standard on all models. This includes all the possible driver aids and safety systems you could wish for, four-wheel steering with the intriguing ‘Crab Mode’ for getting what is an otherwise big car in and out of tight spots, a range-saving heat pump, noise cancelling over the 20-speaker audio system, heated seats front and rear and … more. Loads more! Predictably the digital instruments and central screen are your main point of contact with the car, though there is at least a separate touch-screen for operating them and the menus aren’t as fiddly as some we’ve encountered. There are thankfully stalks and a few physical buttons but it’s still annoying to have to go into a menu to do something as basic as adjust the door mirrors. It was at least easy to bring up CarPlay for regularly used apps, navigation and infotainment, none of which was yet working on the ’native’ systems of the pre-production cars we tested. Vibes-wise the interior of the IM6 presents as of reasonable quality, though the faux leather feels plasticky and you don’t have to dig too deep to encounter cheap materials or finishing. If such things matter to you.

Where the IM5 is available with two battery options the IM6 only gets the fancier one, which is bigger, more powerful and – if you can find a suitably fast charger – will top itself up incredibly quickly. Range between stops is claimed at 388 miles for the single-motor car and 313 miles on the Performance model, the latter somewhat optimistic going by a mid-summer test drive that should have flattered it. For reasons we can’t quite fathom the Performance model also comes with over 750 horsepower, which is supercar levels. In a family SUV. And no less daft in practice than it sounds in principle. Assuming your first meaningful stab of throttle doesn’t put you through a wall or hedge it will, best case, have your passengers turning green with the G-forces, and has little value beyond novelty or pub bragging rights over your Tesla-owning friends. We haven’t tried it yet but the 407 horsepower of the single-motor Long Range model sounds like plenty, and much more appropriate for a vehicle of this type. On that basis it would be our pick.