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Thanks for the detailed review.
Looks like a pretty good car. Nice to see MG has provided underbody protection, bonnet and firewall insulation and full cladding in front and rear wheel. This kind of gives an assurance that no compromise is made on the name of cost cutting.

What will be missed:
Ventilated seats - A pretty good to have feature. Need to see how the leatherette seats will be during peak Indian summer.
Wireless Charger - Not a great miss for me
Subwoofer - Are infinity speakers available?
Cooled glovebox
Paddle shifters - with Hector and global ZST missing paddle shifters this was expected of Astor too
Auto Dimming IRVM - how? why?? MG went one step ahead with heated ORVM (and this might be a standard feature) and one step backward by not including auto dimming IRVM.

Hope the car is priced well and comes with 5- 7 years warranty and some good service packages.

Looks like initial teething issues will persist. AI bot stopped working at the showroom. Looks like it got confused hearing so many different voices in one day.

Just spoke to the SA myself and he is confident that the prices will be revealed by 1st Oct,21 and the price range he qouted based on his sources is between 12 to 18 Ex showroom.The prices seem to be on the higher side if his statement holds true.

Looks like a very well thought out car! VAG please take note, as even the Chinese easily outdo you nowadays!

Nice and detailed preview. Rated 5-starts!

MG has definitely launched a good car and Astor ticks all the boxes a customer wants. I spoke to a dealer in Bengaluru, test drives to be available from 1st week of Oct and bookings start soon after that. He expects the top varied to be priced 20L (approx) on-road here (translates to around 17L ex-showroom).

Having been holding off my car purchase decision for sometime now and keenly looking for MG pricing and test drive reviews.

I've been to an MG showroom to checkout this and first thing I noticed was the misaligned fuel cap release.



Just triggers one's OCD. I hope these are rectified.

The car in the black with red interiors looks good, which I honestly did not expect. The build quality looked good too.

On the boot space, there were spacers installed between the spare tyre and the lid and the SA confirmed that they can be removed and the lid lowered to get more boot space.

P.S: SA asked me not to post the pics of misaligned fuel/bonnet release. But after saying that this is already a public information, thanks to TeamBHP, he went silent.lol:

As the first look previews are out, it feels like MG has surely upped the game in terms of luxurious, feature loaded interiors - the Koreans still have the advantage of brand, diesel engine and service network and will continue to sell well. Looks like the Germans are possibly left with only one advantage - the way it drives, leaving it an enthusiast's favourite like ever.

All said and done - a LOT still depends on pricing. If MG gets that right, this along with the XUV 7OO will bring more realistic pricing and competition once again to the 10-20L segment. Hope these two make the others fight harder for their market shares.

Looks like the 1.5 VTi top end. No "Brit Dynamic" badge, and different alloys. Any other goodies missing compared to the Turbo?

Strange if they built (or adopted) a different 1349cc, 4 cylinder compared to the 1349cc 3-cylinder in the ZST. Hope it's not some PR error.

But if they did - hope it's for the better in terms of matching up to the 4-cylinder rivals. Waiting to hear more details!

Honestly, I hadn’t paid any attention to the Astor launch till now. I just happened to stop at MG today to check out the ZS EV and realised they’re launching the Astor. And my goodness it really did look stunning. I’ll reserve verdict till the drive reports of the turbo petrol are out but on paper at least this can really set the cat amongst the pigeons in the whole Sonet to Creta to VAG twins segment.

The interiors though bold are extremely well executed and I dare say with the dash design and two tone seats even look much better than its electric counterpart. The boot is definitely smaller than the ZS EV (which runs deeper) but the flip side is its definitely “closer” to creating a flat floor than the ZS EV which is distinctly two distinct levels when the seats are dropped.

Irrelevant for this thread but I did drive the ZS EV and I was absolutely floored by the experience. I really think the government should widen the criteria of FAME subsidies beyond this 15 lakh limit if they want to encourage EV adoption. But I digress from the Astor and will save these observations for the electric thread.

I’m looking forward to the price reveal which will obviously be lower than the already brilliantly priced Hector. It does queer the pitch for the ZS EV though which is going to be clean 4 - 6 lakh over the Astor I would imagine. Anyone walking in for a ZS today is bound to have a second thought if he can have the same car at ~5 odd lakh less, variant for variant.

Visited MG faridabad. Car was displayed in carbon grey color. I hadnt even heard of this color in MG astor. The car looked stunning and lot better than in pics. If i buy this, its gonna be in this color. Looks a lot different than its rivals and in a good way. Interiors felt top notch and with good quality. Seats were comfortable. Panaromic sunroof is huge, good rear leg space.

I think wireless android auto and carplay is not available. Its the only significant feature i will miss.

The showroom was very crowded, goes on to show that car has generated ample interest in buyers. Could hear multiple people saying looks bigger and better than kushaq.

Sorry could not click pictures without crowd.

Hector vs Astor - product placement strategy?
If you look at Astor and Hector back to back, it seems Astor if placed in 9 to 15Lakhs ex-sh, will be a good option and will not cannibalise Hector sales.

Otherwise, if gap will be minor, then top end of Astor will be less preferable in front of Hector. Hector gives you much more space, better speakers setup with woofer (Infinity), better boot space, better rear seat leg space, etc. Only thing missing is ADAS, for which news is that Hector 2022 facelift will come with it in March/April.

Looking at how much hector offers in features and size and then looking at features like woofer, auto dimming IRVM, low powered turbo (compared to segment leaders), Astor top end at 15 lakhs ex sh, will be ideal to break all records and crack this segment in presence of even XUv700. Plus buying Ford's factory should help in future to meet demand.

Turbo engine of Astor -
Is it really a 1.4L 4 cylinder engine? That too under tuned to 220Nm torque? ZST comes with similar 1349cc but 3 cylinder engine. Not sure which engine it is and how it will perform. It will be great if they offer 4 cylinder one, as I was not sure about investing north of 15 lakhs for 3 cylinder 1.3L engine.

The Astor especially in its Turbo Petrol avatar seems such a complete offering!

1 Reliable (going by the make and type) GB - Check
2. Potent engine - check
3. Full set of safety features - check
4. Good build and interior quality - check

This combination has been long time coming and I am more or less convinced to bring one home, unless some serious flaws brought up by our test drives.

I had registered my interest on MG's site this morning and got a call within two hours. The exec was polite, sounded reasonably professional and going by a sales person's standards these days, knew the product features well. He said the variant details and pricing will be revealed in this month itself :thumbs up. Now looking forward to check it out in person and take a test drive.

A wonderful review that points out everything. The car is loaded to the brim but lacks a diesel as rightly pointed out in the review. It would have made it a lot more appealing to the high mileage buyers.

None that I could find out! This was the savvy trim. For a moment I thought that the electric seat adjustment was missing but it was there on the driver's side. As confirmed by MG sales folks, passenger side electric adjustment is not available on any trims

No restrictions as such on the top end trim. All three options available: Sangria red, Iconic Ivory and tuxedo black

Can we choose the different interior scheme with all the models right. If you want to go for all black or the ivory. I hope the top model is not restricted to the sangria red colour.

I believe official name is "Aurora Silver".
"Spiced Orange, Starry Black, Aurora Silver, Glaze Red and Candy White"

I too checked it out and ticks most of the boxes for me as of now(apart from the "AI" inside) I sure hope we do get an option at dealer/company level to not opt for it/ opt out /disable in some ways.

Personally I am still not ready for this level of tech intimacy in a driving machine.

My requirement : An automatic for point A to B. What we have seen from MG, this could be the "bargain" in the price bracket I have been looking for (10-15 lakh INR), eagerly awaiting variant wise price list.