MG is an English car brand owned by the Chinese automotive manufacturer SAIC Motor Corporation Limited.
The Chinese state-owned automobile design and manufacturer SAIC Motor Corporation Limited has headquarters in Shanghai and operates worldwide. Previously known as the Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation, it comes in the list of Fortune Global 100 companies and is also one of the big four automobile companies owned by the Chinese state. The other three organisations are Changan Automobile, Dongfeng Motor Corporation and FAW Group.
The organisation has had the biggest production volume of any Chinese automaker in 2014, having produced more than four and a half million vehicles. Not all of the vehicles rolled off the factory lines are passenger cars, and more than one million are commercial vans.
SAIC was established in the 1940s when the Chinese automotive industry was in its conceptional years. It was among the first car makers in China and was famous for producing the car Shanghai SH760. Right now, the automaker takes part in one of the oldest surviving joint endeavour making sino-foreign vehicles, with Volkswagen. It has also had a joint endeavour with General Motors since 1998 and owns forty per cent of their shares.
SAIC items sell under an assortment of brand names, including those of its joint-venture partners. Two prominent brands that SAIC itself owns are MG and Roewe, a domestic luxury Chinese car marque.
Morris Garages Motor India, also known as MG Motor India, is the Indian subsidiary of SAIC Motor Corporation. The Indian subsidiary of the company was set up in 2017 but didn’t start manufacturing and sales operations till the year 2019.
MG Motor India at present has a network of more than sixty-five showrooms across fifty urban cities in the country.
Currently, the automaker has one manufacturing plant in India, which is set up in Halol, Gujarat. The plant has a production limit of 80,000 units every year and was owned by General Motors India Private Limited, before they ended their business activities here towards the end of 2017 – the year that MG Engine India was set up.
MG Engine India has put more than two thousand crore rupees in redoing the one hundred and seventy-eight acres of the land, after its takeover from General Motors.
MG Motors India currently has two cars in the Indian market – the MG Hector SUV and the MG ZS electric SUV.
The Luxury SUV – MG Gloster
MG Gloster has officially made its debut in India at the 2020 Auto Expo which was held at the Greater Noida Expo centre. It is a full-sized SUV based on the Chinese Maxus D90 and will be the brand’s range-topper in India the largest SUV by MG, scheduled for launch sometime around Diwali this year.
The enormous SUV will most definitely be appealing for the ‘size does make a difference’ swarm. Over five meters in length, the Gloster is longer than the Toyota Land Cruiser 200. The styling is quite similar to the Maxus D90 giving it a large and imposing look, however, the company has changed quite a few details for the India launch. The chrome highlights, wheels and grille have been restyled for this particular model and has a more angular grille in comparison to the standard MG. It also sports chrome trims for the LED DRLs above a set of sleek headlight units. The cabin constitutes a large greenhouse with roof rails and merges into a full rear, with sharp and precision-cut sculpting and thin LED tail-light units. It sports an enormous ‘Gloster’ badge, finished in chrome and nineteen-inch wheels on the Gloster wear 255/55 R19 section continental tyres. The Gloster has a light-truck ladder-frame structure.
The large exterior gives way for a much more spacious cabin with plenty of room in each of the three rows in the Gloster. Additionally, the quality level is excellent and is effectively a couple of notches above the Hector along with premium material quality.
It won’t be a car by MG Motors if it isn’t filled to the brim with features. Although there haven’t been any announcements related to the final spec of the Gloster yet, the car displayed at the 2020 Auto Expo has an impressive list of features.
Take a look at these:
- Panoramic sunroof,
- LED DRLs,
- Adaptive LED headlights,
- Ambient lighting,
- Gesture controlled tailgate,
- Automatic three-zone air conditioning,
- An eight-inch multi-information instrument cluster display
- A 12.3-inch touchscreen infotainment system.
Other than these, MG has also promised to provide a list with ample personalisation options.
Renditions sold abroad accompany a two hundred and twenty-four horsepower turbo-petrol engine with a cubic-capacity of two litres. The transmission will be either manual or automatic with a six-speed gearbox. For its Indian spec, MG is devising its own in-house two-litre twin-turbo diesel engine that produces two hundred and eighteen horsepower and four hundred and eighty newton-metre of torque. This new self-developed engine was first showcased last year at the Guangzhou Motor show in China. The engine’s design is inspired by Fiat’s Multijet II engine, which is used to power the MG Hector.
The Gloster will be assembled at the Halol plant in Gujarat, even though the local content will be limited only to a few components. The Gloster will most probably be marketed as an upgrade from the likes of Toyota Fortuner and Ford Endeavor rather than a direct rival. It is being estimated that the price of the model will be over INR 45 lakh. The Hector has already shaken up the mid SUV market, and now all eyes will be on the Gloster to see if it can get a similar result in premium SUV space.
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