Is this the end of car racism as we know it?

I am marking in stone this car as the moment Chinese cars arrived as a force to be reckoned with. And this MG4 happens to be a Hyundai Excel-sized bargain.

Stephen Corby

3 min read

8:08AMFebruary 15, 2024.

Updated 11:37AMFebruary 16, 2024

The Weekend Australian Magazine

carsales.com gave the MG4 electric hatch their Car of the Year Award. No, really, a Chinese EV – best car of the lot for 2023. Picture: Supplied

As you’ll have noted, this column likes to tackle the big questions; essentially, I see it as a very long-winded job application to take over from Phillip Adams if he ever decides to retire, and thus it is that this week I’m going to discuss racism, or, more specifically, caracism.

In a desperate bid to get their attention, I will occasionally appal my children by pointing out casual racial slurs that were common in the playground in my day. While they clearly think I’m making it all up, it does strike me that kids these days have shifted a very satisfying distance from the kind of language that name-called out the Greek, Vietnamese, Italian and Chinese kids at my highly multicultural primary school.

I also grew up around adults who were openly scathing about cars from Japan – indeed, for many years I thought “shitbox” was a catch-all for Japanese brands – and loudly proclaimed that they would never buy any of that foreign muck because they didn’t fight and die against them just so they could give them our money. Or words to that effect, but with more swearing and racism.

Many times, particularly when I was sent to Bathurst to cover a bogan bacchanalia with a car race as a backing track, I would also meet people who swore they would never, ever drive any vehicle that wasn’t Australian made.

As recently as 2000, the Ford Falcon and Holden Commodore – neither of which looked like pick-up trucks or SUVs – were our best-selling cars, while third place was taken by yet another foreign invader that doubters said would never catch on, at least partly because the people who made them ate dogs for lunch: the Hyundai Excel.

The Hyundai Excel.

I well recall living with a woman who owned an Excel and every time we drove in it I feared that one of its doors might blow off in a high wind. The idea that Hyundais would one day look and feel as high quality as they do today would have struck me then as equally absurd as the suggestion that I would one day feel old.

I have tried to keep the cautionary tales of Korean and Japanese brands in mind while hating on every Chinese car I’ve driven so far and while trawling through the trolling comments on some of my reviews about how they’ll never catch on, often for reasons that have nothing to do with engineering.

And then a colleague of mine turned up at my house in an MG4 electric hatch, raving about how good it was and demanding I drive it. A short time later, some people I respect at carsales.com gave it their Car of the Year Award. No, really, a Chinese EV – best car of the lot for 2023.

Could Chinese cars, or at least one of them, really have progressed that far, so fast? I spent a week in an MG4 and can report that a great leap forward has been made.

The cynical part of my brain wants to point out that it’s a lot easier to make electric cars good (just look at Tesla’s success) than it is those with complex engines, but the fact is the way the MG4 rides, handles, steers and generally impresses you with its rear-drive balance is simply light years ahead of anything else that has come out of MG, or the entire Chinese car industry.

It’s also impressively thrusty, with a zero to 100km/h time of 7.2 seconds, which belies just how quick it feels, all the time, everywhere.

Overall I would describe the MG4 as almost annoyingly good, and definitely surprisingly so. Picture: Supplied

Yes, there are cheap-feeling bits in the cabin – which is admittedly very spacious for a hatch – and the styling looks like someone tried to turn their Spirit Animal into a car (I think the animal was Bambi, but it might have been a giant rutting stag), but overall I would describe the MG4 as almost annoyingly good, and definitely surprisingly so. I didn’t even hate the stupid video-game-style lighting features on the rear wing.

And when I say that it feels cheap, it should be pointed out that this an electric car that starts at just $38,990, which, comparatively speaking, is a Hyundai Excel-sized bargain (they used to cost just $13,000, imagine that).

This an electric car that starts at just $38,990. Picture: Supplied

That price is for the entry-level Excite, which has a 51kWh battery and offers 350km of range, but I drove the heftier 64kWh Essence, with 435km of range and a price of $47,990. At the top of the range sits a 77kWh Long Range model with 530km of range and a $55,990 sticker.

The one thing I did hate about the car was the lack of a start button – if you’re in it, it’s ready to go and it shuts off only when you get out – and I struggled to get it into gear a few times without stamping on the brake pedal like a flamenco dancer. Other than that, I am marking in stone the MG4 as the moment that Chinese cars arrived as a force to be reckoned with, rather than a segment of vehicles you’d only buy because they were cheap. Is this the end of caracism as we know it? I will leave that up to the commenterati to decide.