ANCAP-smacked MG5 small sedan is coming, larger sporty four-door and SUV also probable.

A SMALL sedan that earned an unenviable rating from the national crash test assessor has been signed up for sale by MG here.

Two other petrol family-minded models - a fastback four-door car and a big three-row family-hauler  - seem highly likely to follow.

And, on top of this, MG is building up to launch its exotic electric sports car, the Cyberster. 

At an event today to launch another small car, the latest MG3 hatch, the make’s national distributor confirmed it is soon to start retailing the MG5 (above), which places as Australia’s cheapest sedan.

Whether it carries that mantle here has yet to be determined, as MG New Zealand says it is not ready to disclose the local specification. That will happen in the next few weeks.

Meantime, MG NZ country manager Arek Zywot and Akshat Ahuja, a Melbourne-based senior product and strategy manager for the region, also signalled two other cars are likely close to being signed off.

One is the MG7 (below), a medium sedan with an emphatically sporty coupe-roofed styling vibe and serious stonk to match that will start as a pure internal combustion engined car but is likely to also be joined by a petrol-electric format recently unveiled in China.

The other is a sports utility, which is still under wraps but is being tipped by some as rebadged edition of a three-row seven seater from Roewe (another brand within the vast SAIC parent car-making conglomerate) called the RX9.

The MG7 is still at stage of evaluation for NZ, says Zywot, even though it is all but confirmed for our neighbour.  

Ahuja suggests the SUV’s positioning will be sorted within a few months as well.

MG5 has been sold in Australia for the past year. Over there the choice spans Vibe and higher-level Essence models. 

The first is powered by a non-turbocharged 1.5-litre four-cylinder petrol engine, producing 84kW and 150Nm – driving the front wheels through a continuously-variable automatic transmission. 

The Essence upgrades to a turbocharged 1.5-litre four-cylinder, increasing its outputs to 119kW and 250Nm, delivered to the front wheels via a seven-speed dual-clutch automatic transmission.

MG claims the Vibe returns fuel consumption in mixed (urban and highway) driving of 5.7 litres per 100km, while the Essence is claimed to drink 5.9L/100km.

One item of luggage it will bring here is the most unfavourable test result possible from the Australasian New Car Assessment Programme, which is part-funded by NZ Government and agencies and holds status as our national accreditor.

ANCAP late last year awarding the car a zero-star crash rating, the worst possible score it can deliver, made headlines in Australia. 

It is just the third car to receive that rating, along with the 2023 Mahindra Scorpio 4wd and the 2021 Mitsubishi Express, a version of the Renault Traffic (which has a strong NCAP score).

That sort of score virtually exempts it from fleet sale and certainly will not allow it to be picked by Government departments, which demand at least an ANCAP four star.

Zywot said the score was what the score was. He believed MG5 will still find favour.

“We will be talking to the audience that is relevant to that product … we believe there is an opportunity for the product in the sedan market. We just want to give it a go.”

MG5 will be here before year-end and MG7 might be close behind. The large sports utility seems more likely to be a 2025 reach.

Ahuja said talk of it being a Roewe was just speculation; he suggested it might in fact be a pure MG design, yet to be seen in this part of the world.

“What I can tell you is that it is going to be a true MG seven seater SUV. I've had the chance to look at the car and drive it a couple of weeks back. 

“It's an amazing product and I think it's one of the products that our brand has been missing for a long time. But now I think it's going to fill that gap. It’s a great car and I think, for New Zealand in particular, it'll be a great match.”

MG’s current offerings in the SUV sector are the MG ZS and larger, medium MG HS, both of which will also be renewed here this year. 

The HS is said to make its official debut at the Goodwood Festival of Speed in the United Kingdom next month and the new MG ZS is earmarked to arrive across the Tasman in October. The current ZS family brings in the highest registration counts of any model MG sells here.

The Roewe is larger than both the ZS and HS - it’s 4.9 metres long and 1.8m high - and so will be the MG.

Powering all RX9 variants is a 2.0-litre four-cylinder turbo-petrol engine outputting 178kW/392Nm and driving either the front or all four wheels via a nine-speed automatic transmission.

Ahuja is also excited about MG7’s potential. “I've had the chance to drive that car a couple of weeks back in Shanghai and I think it's a cracker.

“I would compare it to a performance sedan or something like that. It's sporty. It's a coupe body style and the performance is great, it’s going to be close to 200 kilowatts or so from the engine.”

Adds Zywot: “It's definitely on the radar, but still under evaluation.  There's a huge interest for that particular product in our market, even though we know that sedans are not sort of in high demand, but it is not a traditional sedan. 

“People today … still buy performance coupes, sporty sedans. It's that product.”

MG NZ has in the past two years set itself up as an electric-first brand, but with EVs having taken a severe sales hit over the past six months, there’s some rethinking going on.

While EVs will always be high on the roster, Zywot says the mantra is to “provide cars for everyone.”

“The market is changing and it (a strong petrol portfolio) doesn’t mean that's the direction of the brand.

“However, if there's an opportunity, we want to make sure that we are going to capitalise on it and we are very privileged as a brand that we have possibility to achieve that.”