It used to be fun over ten years ago, when Top Gear was reborn in its current form, to hear Jeremy Clarkson cast his opinion on a variety of cars he liked or didn’t like. For some, he struck a chord with audiences, as his view coincided with the general consensus, while for others, his extreme views (and means of expression) did get him a lot of (negative) publicity, which was the purpose of the move in the first place…
Just like now, when he bashed the living daylight out of the Chinese-owned, British-built and –designed MG6, and once again, attracted some bad press for himself.
Apparently, his crew booked a test drive with MG’s largest offering, so that he could write a review about it in his Sunday Times column. As it turns out, that was “more of a chore than it had to be,” according to Autoblog, and even once they got the car, things still didn’t go down smoothly. Jeremy even stalled the MG6 in an intersection and was forced to push it, blaming a malfunctioning stop/start system – one of many discovered faults…
In addition, this would not have been the Top Gear presenter we know and love, if he didn’t bash the company for being Chinese owned – apparently it’s better to have no MG at all than to have one that is financed by Chinese investors. All of the bad press he achieved through his hateful review prompted MG to respond.
Their chosen means of getting the message across was China Car Times (the choice of site is a bit amusing for a “UK-based automaker”, we’ll give them that). MG also invited journalists and members of the public to try out the 6, and see that it’s nowhere near as dreadful as Clarkson’s review would have you believe (according to the company, of course). Besides, other test drives of the car are available, even in video form, and while they don’t say the car is excellent, they are nowhere near as negative. We posted two of them below, for reference.
By Andrei Nedelea
VIDEO