First drive: The MG TRQ-L delivers surprises as a new entry in the pickup segment
There is a new pickup in town and it is the TRQ-L from MG. This makes it sound like “Truck, Large”, which it is. Now looking at the British marque MG historically, it was always a company that brought something that the driving public would find accessible and usable. Indeed Morris Motors was the producer of the Morris Minor, which was the first British car ever to hit the million vehicles sold and is credited with bringing the British population into the world of independent travel.
When you think about that, this pickup follows those lines rather closely. It is an extremely value-oriented utilitarian vehicle and in many ways feels like an old school pickup. And yet it has these little details that just make the car more easy to drive. It is a pickup-type ride, no question, with front double wishbone and rear leaf spring suspension. Yet I found it very easy to drive. It uses a 2-liter turbocharged diesel engine with an 8-speed automatic transmission going only to the rear wheels. It is not luxurious in terms of its interior appointments, but it is clean and solid and well thought out. It has the expected safety and security features like anti-lock braking, electronic brake force distribution, electronic stability program, emergency brake assist, tire pressure monitoring systems and hill descent control and the like, but it does not have the ability to fine tune all of those.
So it is basically kind of turn the key and go. It’s surprising how easy it is to drive given that it is a long vehicle and a very heavy one. Length is a full 5,365 millimeters and a large bed has a payload capacity of 1,055 kilos. The front hood and rear tailgate are massive and heavy, though that hood seems to hold a lot of insulation so makes sense.
So who is this vehicle for? I’ve never really been a pickup person, but what I have been finding is that the pickup truck based vehicles from the more new-to-us manufacturers from China have actually been making the pickups that are the most easy to drive. They are exactly what they are supposed to be, workhorses, but they just have a little more tech and detail. All this makes sense when you realize that MG is now produced by SAIC, which was founded in 1955 as the Shanghai Internal Combustion Engine Components Company and created its first car making joint venture with Volkswagen in 1984. They wanted to make solid vehicles of value. And, as MG Philippines President Felix Jiang says, as a state-supported company they need to over-deliver and not make claims they can’t back up. Their pickup needs to work like a pickup.
So this Truck, Large may be a bit of a surprise to those of us that look at MG as the approachable, affordable old British sports car brand. But if you look at the older, deeper history of Morris Motors and Morris Commercial Vehicles, this seems like exactly what they would have done.
