All generations and engines together · 17,147 MOT tests in the 2025 data
Split by first-registration year. Cars registered in a changeover year can belong to either generation.
Computed from DVSA MOT results, all of Great Britain, 2025. Nothing here is opinion.
Share of tests where each item was recorded. The dark tick is the class average across all tracked models; bars are scaled within each group.
The rows that judge the model rather than its keeper. 17,132 tests in this band.
Tyres, pads and stone chips say more about how the car was driven and maintained than about how it was built.
Owner folklore from forums and the motoring press. Most of it never shows up in an MOT, which is why this section exists at all.
MG HS road tests have flagged an unsettled, bouncy ride since launch, worse on the lighter petrol version than the heavier PHEV. Auto Express and Honest John both note the car "patters over broken tarmac" and gets "quite bouncy" over a run of bumps, and Parkers describes "woolly steering and unsettled ride" too. That soft factory tune is a character trait when the car is new, not a fault, but it fits with suspension being the fault category that shows up most often in this segment's MOT data. Treat any knocking or clonking on top of the normal softness, rather than the softness itself, as a bush, top mount or damper on its way out.
MG issued a UK safety recall (R/2023/050, dated 16 March 2023) covering EHS plug-in hybrids built in the 2020-2022 model years, after finding the ground wire for the PTC cabin heater could work loose, trap its insulation against the bodywork, and create a risk of overheating. Around 3,300 UK cars were affected. The fix is free at an MG dealer. It only applies to the plug-in hybrid, badged EHS on the V5C; the petrol and regular hybrid HS don't appear in the recall register at all.
Owners on MG-specific forums describe a brief hesitation on the seven-speed dual-clutch automatic, where the car feels like it's lost drive for a second before power returns, mostly reported on facelifted cars from around 2022 on. A Pakistan-market forum thread describes an outright intermittent failure to engage with an engine fault warning at around 32,000 miles, though UK owners mostly describe it as an odd quirk rather than a breakdown. Posters on the mgevs.com owners' forum reckon MG addressed it with a running change on Phase 2 cars built from roughly March 2024. Manual gearbox cars aren't affected.
The touchscreen system is the most consistently criticised part of MG HS ownership. Honest John says it has seen "more than one report of glitching touchscreens" on the second-generation car, and Auto Express calls the system "clunky and unresponsive" with sat-nav directions that are "often wrong". A real buyer's question on Honest John's Ask HJ describes a December 2025-registered PHEV Trophy needing three trips back to the dealer for a sat-nav fault that still wasn't fully cured. MG hasn't acknowledged a specific fix; budget for an occasional reboot rather than a repair bill.
The 1.5-litre turbo petrol is repeatedly marked down in road tests for a laggy throttle, taking around a second to respond to a prod of the pedal, and for sounding "strained" and "gravelly" when worked hard. Parkers separately calls it a unit that "lacks refinement". None of this is tied to a failure or a repair bill, and owners are split on how much it matters day to day, so weigh it up on the test drive rather than treating it as a fault.
Built from the two sections above.
Same segment (Small SUVs), best MOT record first. Compare before you shortlist.