It kicks Porsches into touch off the line, but what about when corners come into play?

Price: $69,990

Powertrain: Dual electric motors, single speed transmission, 324kW/600Nm.

How big: 4287mm long, 1836mm wide, 1516mm high, 2705mm wheelbase.

We like: Undeniably huge bang for buck, maintains all standard practicalities.

Not so much: A bit too bogan in bends.

NHRA Drag Racing Series boasts the fastest-accelerating cars in the world.

The highest category is Top Fuel, where the cars are powered by a supercharged, fuel-injected engine.

Consuming 57 litres of nitromethane fuel in a matter of seconds, Top Fuel dragsters will hit 100kmh from a standstill in around 0.8 seconds can and covering a 304 metre drag strip in under 3.7 seconds. They are phenomenal.

In 2019, the record for the fastest run in NHRA history was set, with a time of 3.569 seconds and a top speed of 544.23kmh at the finish line.

So tell me … who drove?

Don’t be embarrassed if you can’t say. Brittany Force should be better known. The level of guts and determination required to do what she does is unimaginable to me. It’s way, way more than I could muster. Respect.

And, yet, doesn’t this just say that, when ‘we’ talk about how exciting speed is, we’re thinking more multi-dimensionally; as is pace with movement and poise? Braking, balance, pedal play, steering. Something beyond drag strips. Perhaps race tracks, rally stages, favourite roads.

With all due respect to Top Fuel and its fans, there’s good reason you could ask anyone - even your gran - to name three Formula One drivers, past or present, with confidence they can do so. It might be Clark. It might be Senna. It might (and should) be McLaren, Amon, Hulme, Hartley and Lawson. But it’ll be someone. V8 Supercars guns; rally drivers? Yup, I’d back most to pass that test, too.

If greater dimensionality in skillset makes drivers all the more memorable, is that same for cars?

We’re in a fascinating time where electric vehicles ostensibly designed for family use are establishing as ‘supercar slayers’, on merit of their incredibly punchy launch times. It’s a factor that has fuelled Tesla’s status and kept YouTube shares healthy. You can understand why all makes want to get in on the act.

The MG4 XPower is the latest bullet to load, and its 0-100kmh time is ballsy indeed. The open road limit from standstill in 3.8 seconds! Many have been quick to headline how some Porsche 911s are slower. Like-sized and priced hot hatches also fall victim. Even others of its own kind. I’ve seen the video in which this wee block of brio uppercuts an Audi RS e-tron GT, which is supposed to be faster. That’s seriously impressive.

XPower is the MG4 EV Long Range in seriously ‘energised' state. The 64kWh battery continues to feed not just a rear-mounted electric motor, which is pepped from 150kW to 170kW, but another at the front, delivering 150kW. End result is a family hatchback with 324kW - yes, that’s 435bhp in ‘old talk’ - and 600Nm of torque. A lot for a car of this size? That’s the understatement of all understatements.

The accuracy of MG’s timing gear requires no fancy validation. The good old gut-o-meter relates that it’s not foxing the clock. A straight, deserted tarmac country road allowed opportunity to try its mettle. And? Wow ….

Max wallop is video game easy. Touch through prompts on the centre screen. Sport mode, ’track setting’ on page two of the menu. Then either Lap or Stage, it doesn’t seem to matter which. Hold your left foot hard on the brake, right flat on the throttle, watch the power meter hit zenith … then let go. And hold on.

It’s a heck of a gut punch. Ferocity was fierce even with three largish adults were aboard (because, well, we’re all children, right)?

So, is this the EV petrolhead have been craving? In part. Roads aren’t always laid out like dragstrips. When corners involve, the tale certainly takes a turn. Not a 180, thankfully, but once again you’re in for a wild, almost unhinged time. After taking it on a favourite route reserved for hot hatches, I’d say how you feel about how it acquits will depend on your taste, expectations. and reactions.

Dynamic dexterity, ‘oneness’ with a driver and ‘communication’. Those are known enthusiast affection spots the X will surely have to nail.

Going by how it dresses for battle, you’d wonder what crowd it wants to hang with. Obviously, the usual draw for any ICE equivalent, a fruity exhaust, is out of the the question. Akrapovic has yet to serve up anything useful to the electric sector and MG steers clear of synthesised stuff.

So everything relies on the visual impact. Which, let’s face it, isn’t exactly sensibility smashing. A pity, because it has a good basis to work from. In elemental form, the MG4 is solid design. A bit fussy around the rear, perhaps, but decisively chunky in its overall proportion, its hunkered, squared look making a nice change to more amorphous approach of others and attuned, you’d have to think, to a younger crowd.

With all that going on, you’d think they’d have really gone nuts with the XPower and made it look like a grown up Hot Wheels project. Sadly, no. Telltales restrict to the wheel styling, gloss black lower accents, black roof, and orange covers for the brake calipers. Hardly in your face and arguably not enough to swing the youth audience it surely needs to earn appreciation from. Being a car of their future, and all that.

For its part, the brand says it chose not be too extrovert, so as to keep low profile. I’d say that’s the accounts’ department talking. When the most discussed styling feature is something all MG4s have - the bisected spoiler hanging over the rear glass - you have to ask if it needs something more. Even something as simple as a graphics pack.

I sensed the test car probably only won any attention because it was in a pretty neat matt-look Racing Green paint (admittedly, also bespoke) and had a personalised plate.

It’s no more shouty within. The cabin appears pretty standard save for taking alloy covers on the pedals and a microfibre suede seat covering. The brand says the front seats are sports-types, but the folk at Recaro and Bride wouldn’t agree. Nothing else, from carpets to all the controls, including the presentations and operabilities on the wide central touchscreen and digital instrument display, leaps out as being much if any different to any other MG4.

Everything, therefore, really comes down to how it expresses itself on the move. Again: If off-the-line alacrity is all that’s needed to cement special status, then it’s off to a flying start. Obviously response depends on which mode you happen to be running in. Throttle modulation is tangibly less touchy in Eco than Sport, and Normal is also relatively even-tempered.

Yet even when all is dialled back, it is still an intensely feisty little thing, and not just in respect to standing start get-go. There’s a fair big of mid-range muscularity, too, so overtaking is ludicrously easy. The drawback of electric is weight; the battery pack generally accounts for one third of an EV’s weight. MG cites XPower as clocking 1800kg. So, while no bigger than a Corolla, it’s clocking about the same as a base Commodore. Feel it fly and you’d never believe it.

The standard rear-drive car is actually not a bad thing for country road romping, in that it has a nice balance and okay steering, but clearly with power ramped up significantly, the XPower demands more kit.

MG’s response is to deliver ventilated 345mm disc brakes front and rear, springs that are 15 percent stiffer at the front and 10 percent at the rear, retuned steering, wider tyres and brake-based torque vectoring.

Enough for the job ahead? Ability to hold pace in cornering is the badge of honour for any hot hatch. Basically, all-wheel-drive 101 asks for impetus - no problem there - balance, steering accuracy, decent brakes and huge mechanical grip.

With electrics, the challenges are surely greater. No old school specialist mechanical hardware - EVs don’t even have gearboxes - puts heavy reliance on electronics.

XPower’s computer guided hardware is smart, extensive and utterly necessary. I wondered if the calibrations, not least of the stability and traction-involved hardware, requires more finessing.

Most all-paw hot hatches are set up to allow gentle oversteer on releasing the accelerator mid-corner. Torque vectoring’s role is to effect this, and keep wheelspin firmly in check, through nipping at the inside brakes. The idea is that this will rotate the car into corners. It does that, but the influence is not always subtle, to point the experience was less a collaboration than a conflict. I found I had to watch myself with it.

It’s so eager throttle play also demands finesse. Sometimes it seemed the front and rear motors were in dispute. And that’s with stability assist on. If you disengage it, and get on the power, the fronts spin up.

The car asks a lot of its brakes and tyres. Slamming into bends also puts great reliance onto the stoppers; by end of my drive, the pedal was getting a bit mushy. What hampers driver involvement the pedal feel, it’s wooden to point of making it so hard to know what pressure is exactly right.

The tyres? Bridgestone Turanzas are quality rubber, but aren’t usually considered an outright performance tyre. Expect to hear them protest.

Also mulled was the suspension tune. Though firmer than standard, this car is still soft by GT standard. MG says this was deliberate; it wants the car to feel accessible and pliant. Fair enough and appreciated in everyday driving. But it get a little odd when pushing on. The tuning becomes busy over bumps yet ultimately lets through pitch and squirm.

All in all, there’s stuff going on here that suggests this new-age model could stand to learn more tricks from old guard GTi level products. Assuming those are the cars it is expected to beat. And perhaps it isn’t. Maybe it is just supposed to be about point and shoot. Maybe is it designed to leave more intensive play to another. That being the Cyberster, due here later this year.

While undoubtedly set to sit in a higher price bracket, the impending roadster might be expected to have similar kapow as the hatch in its ultimate form and potentially will be sharper-focused, given development has been led by an engineer who ran Michael Schumacher’s Ferrari Formula One cars during the glory years.

One other thing to consider. With so much additional power and the motors still feeding from a small battery, the XPower is saddled with more of a range penalty than the single motor types. Drive it to its full potential and you won’t be having a good time for an especially long time.

The best pitch for eco achievement comes in sedate, restrained driving. That’s when the front motor shut down, as a fuel saver.

Unsurprisingly, It loses any such dedication to thrift when you explore the thrust. Still, consumption peaking at 26.6kWh on that country run and battery capacity plummeting from 80 percent to just over 20 percent in under two hours was … well, sobering. That’s an energy usage rate on equivalency with anything I’ve seen from more notorious fossil fuel guzzlers exposed to this route. For all my enthusiasm, my driving was still with mind to common sense and licence retention.

All this leaves the XPower in a curious position. The MG4 in rear-drive form is a very good choice among latest electric vehicles; one of the best releases of 2023. But does the AWD help or hinder? Sprint thrills are assured, but does it adequately enthral for all-round driving fun? Is it enough to (excuse the pun) feel the Force?

Had MG gone the whole hog, and bunged in Brembos, Bilsteins, Recaro seats, Michelin P-Zeros, adaptive suspension and drift mode, plus a bigger battery, the budget would have been blown to smithereens. But imagine the car that could have come out of it. It’d be the first modern age MG that would be great for a track day (assuming there’ll be a time when circuits open their gates to electrics) or Targa.

The MG4 has only just begun its production cycle, so there’s still plenty of time left for enhancing this project to its fullest potential, should MG feel the need.

I’d suggest, if nothing else, they’d do well to add a clip to pin a phone onto the little wireless charging shelf.

As is, the current provision of a non-slip mat and a slight lip is utterly insufficient in inhibiting your device flying into the back of the cabin whenever you floor the throttle.

In the meantime, if you’ve had your fill of footage of the XPower smashing off the line, take at alook at the clip below, of the car smashing around the Nurburgring. In this, it’s chasing, but not catching a 911 (you’ll love the fruity exhaust). You can also see it getting on that mid-corner wiggle I experienced. But it’s an astounding effort, all the same.