All generations and engines together · 47,275 MOT tests in the 2025 data · typical mileage at age 7: 52k
One of the worst small SUVs to buy at this age, and worse than most per mile driven. Watch suspension and lights & electrics. A risky used buy. Check the MOT history for repeating suspension advisories before you go.
Owner folklore from forums and the motoring press, with how well each report stands up. Most of it never shows up in an MOT, which is why this section exists at all.
Owners describe a jerky, almost stumbling feel pulling away from cold or crawling in traffic, on both manual and automatic cars. Honest John's reader reports include a 2018 automatic that shuddered on cold starts and needed repeated restarts to settle, and dealers have sometimes told owners this is 'normal' rather than fixing it. Auto Express's road testers separately noted rough engine notes when worked hard and uneven, jerky power delivery on the hybrid. No dealer-wide TSB has surfaced publicly, so fixes vary by dealer and don't always stick.
A recurring theme in Honest John's reader-submitted faults is the traction control and steering control lights coming on together, most often traced to a crank position sensor. Replacing the sensor cures it for some owners, but the lights have come back on other cars, suggesting the fix isn't reliable across the board. It's mostly reported on 2017-2019 cars. Parts and labour for a sensor are cheap in isolation, but repeat dealer visits add up.
A parasitic drain from the radio or infotainment module can flatten the battery overnight, leaving the car dead in the morning. One owner's dealer tried a new cable, multiple resets and two replacement radio modules before it was sorted, and MG itself told the owner it was 'a known problem with some MG ZS cars'. It can strike at any age or mileage. Under warranty the fix is free but can take several visits; out of warranty a module replacement runs into a few hundred pounds.
DVSA recall R/2025/481, issued November 2025, covers just over 31,000 UK MG ZS cars whose engines were emitting NOx above the legal limit. The remedy is a free engine control unit recalibration at an MG dealer, no parts replacement. It doesn't announce itself with a warning light or a driving symptom, so a buyer would only know if the seller has the recall paperwork or if the vehicle check shows it as outstanding.
Auto Express's 2026 Driver Power survey put the ZS last out of 50 cars overall, and last of all for powertrain, with owners citing 'troublesome tech and one too many repairs'. But the individual faults behind that score tend to be minor and cheap: a seat bolster clip coming loose, a parcel shelf cord snapping, a rear USB socket working loose from the console, sticky door handles. Some owners argue the car's reputation is worse than any single fault deserves; others say it's death by a thousand small cuts.
Ranked from this model’s own MOT record, then from what owners report.
Saveable checklistThe physical checks its own defect data says are worth your time, most telling first.
These judge the seller’s upkeep rather than the model, and they are where the haggling money is.
Drawn from the reports above rather than the MOT data. These are the model-specific ones.
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. 8,612 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.
Same segment (Small SUVs), best MOT record first. Compare before you shortlist.