The road between Coimbatore up to the Nilgiri mountains that overlook the city has clearly been resurfaced recently. It has some amazing turns and switchbacks. Despite the suicidal two-wheeler riders that seem to populate all hill roads in India, traffic is relatively moderate and even though the road is slightly narrow at times, it would be a great road to drive in, if you had the right vehicle. Something like a Mini, or even a Swift for that matter. The new MG Hector, on the other hand, is not quite the right vehicle. This was the wrong stretch of road to drive this much anticipated new SUV, purely from a physical point of view.

And I am fairly sure that I am not alone in these complaints. The MG Hector had noticeable body roll. Sure I was attacking the corners and not driving with passengers in the back, but the amount of body roll reminded me of vehicles from the mid-2000s. The last time I had such a wobbly ride in the mountains while driving was back when I drove the Hyundai Santro ZipPlus back in 2003 between Hubli and Karwar. Of course, the soft suspension set-up meant the Hector cushioned the impact of uneven surfaces better than most, but this was certainly not the sort of road to do the first drive impressions on.

And then there was the petrol engine. This 1.5-litre unit with 150PS of power is sourced from MG’s parent company Shanghai Automotive Industrial Corporation (SAIC), again a statutory reminder that while Benedict Cumberbatch is quite English, the MG Hector is very Chinese. Frankly again, much like the wobbly suspension, you tend to notice flaws in a vehicle on certain roads. Mountain roads, for example, involve a lot of gear changes, and since MG only had the manuals and I was driving the petrol Hector uphill, there is the sudden realisation that there is barely a third gear. Many Indian cars have what we call “tall” gears.  Explaining tall and short gears is a highly technical subject but tall gears are primed for fuel economy and shorter gears for better acceleration. Many gearboxes nowadays have a mix of both, short first and second gears and tall fifth or sixth gears. This is all due to modern manufacturing methods for gearboxes.

Long story short, with the Hector petrol, when you shifted from second to third at the engine speeds you would normally shift, maybe a bit higher than usual because one is in the hills, you would discover that there is nothing in third. Nothing. Nada, you press the accelerator and find no power whatsoever. Which is disappointing in the mountains.  But it could be a big concern while overtaking on the plains. That said, the Fiat-Chrysler sourced 2-litre diesel that also does service on the Compass, complete with its six-speed gearbox, is far superior to drive. The heavier engine up front also makes the diesel Hector feel ever so slightly more planted. Sure, you can argue that the MG Hector will mainly be bought be folks who will be driven around, and the driving dynamics really do not matter all that much and the soft suspension will be appreciated by people who work in Okhla Industrial Area for example.

But what about the Hector’s party piece, since the car even wears an ‘Internet Inside’ badge, and you have undoubtedly seen that advert where Benedict Cumberbatch is talking to the car and the sunroof opens and we are told it is all thanks to ‘artificial intelligence’ (AI). Well, a couple of things, voice controls have been around in cars for two decades now, and they have never really been all that great until recently.

The AI aspect of all this is that the system is now connected through the cloud to a back-end which analyses the voice commands for you. I tried such an AI assistant on the new BMW 3-series last December in Portugal and it worked fabulously well. On the Hector, well, it did open the sunroof, the driver side window and allowed me to set the temperature. Very nice. But it could not find our hotel, Le Meridien in Coimbatore. One possible reason is that in the hills, India’s notoriously poor cellphone networks are diabolically bad. But you know what, voice recognition and AI assistance via Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, which the Hector also has support for, worked fine.

Frankly, on the Hector and the Hyundai Venue for that matter, some of these aspects seem redundant and other bits of AI as being promised seem positively Orwellian. More on that in a future column. I agree that voice commands powered by a back-end, like Amazon’s Alexa, are the future and you will likely see that even on entry-level hatchbacks within years. The Hyundai santro and Maruti WagonR, both already have support for third-party systems from Apple and Google. Opening the sunroof is quite gimmicky but I do expect MG to work on the AI that will continually update itself. Next time, it might even recognise the place I want to go to, although somehow I trust Google Maps more than the in-built TomTom system on this car.

So should you buy one? Frankly, it depends on the price. And MG gave us no indications of what the price will be. It has to undercut the Hyundai Tucson. In fact, top-spec models have to come close to the Hyundai Creta prices to make it worthwhile. Because the vehicle, as is, cannot command a price premium. As far as Chinese products go, the analogy I’d use is that it aimed to be a OnePlus but ended up being a Realme, not bad and it will possibly be value for money, but not a vehicle to get excited about.  If Sherlock Holmes could drive, this wouldn’t be the vehicle he would go about London in.