Overview

The dual-cab ute segment is red hot but buyers expect a lot for their money and MG’s first crack looked (on paper at least) like it could shake things up amongst the largely Japanese cohort.

Despite shifting a fairly respectable 796 sales of its U9 this year (to the end of May), outdoing its twin-under-the-skin LDV Terron 9, MG didn’t particularly impress us with its first ute once the shine of all the tech’ wore off.

The U9 shares its unibody platform, engine, and transmission with the LDV Terron 9, but MG has gone to great lengths to try and differentiate the two models which is commendable given how similar many of the twin models in this segment are.

Powering the U9 is a turbocharged 2.5-litre four-cylinder diesel engine producing 160kW/520Nm, mated to an eight-speed ZF-sourced automatic transmission, with claimed fuel use landing at 7.9 litres per 100km.

It features a selectable four-wheel drive system with low range and a variety of off-road and towing modes, plus the top-spec Explore Pro variant gets locking differentials front and back.

While the LDV Terron 9 rides on leaf springs up back, the MG U9 features an independent multi-link coil-sprung rear suspension setup making it somewhat of an outlier across the midsize ute segment.

Despite the coil rear end, it retains a payload of 770-870kg, which is short of the Terron 9’s one-plus-tonne capability but is within the realm of what most dual-cab buyers expect. It also, importantly, gets a 3500kg braked towing capacity.

The U9 rides on 18-inch (Explore), 19-inch (Explore X), or 20-inch wheels (Explore Pro) and all models get LED headlights with the higher grades getting fancier tri-beam units along with tub lighting.

Inside, the Explore Pro we tested gets power-adjustable leather front seats with ventilation (plus massage functions for the driver), dual 12.3-inch digital screens, an eight-speaker JBL sound system, and a massive panoramic sunroof.

There is also an optional $5500 electronically operated Smart Hatch that retracts the rear cabin panel to link the cab to the tub, extending the usable load length up to 2.4 metres.

Standard safety includes an ADAS suite with autonomous emergency braking, blind-spot monitoring, driver fatigue monitoring, intelligent cruise control and more. Plus, it carries a five-star ANCAP safety rating.

The range kicks off at $52,990 driveaway, topping out at $60,990 d/a for our flagship Explore Pro tester, which makes this one of the best appointed utes at the $60K (give or take) price point.

Warranty is a bit confusing, because it’ll depend what kind of customer you are. Private or small/medium fleet users get a five-year/unlimited-kilometre warranty, but large fleets get five years/160,000km.

On the road

Now, I know what 500Nm feels like in a ute because it’s become the gold standard across the dual-cab landscape in the last couple of years.

Despite claiming 160kW/520Nm, the engine in the U9 feels sluggish regardless of the drive mode. It isn’t even tuned particularly well with its eight-speed transmission, which requires a pretty liberal stab of the accelerator to get it to downshift.

I was driving it back to back with an Isuzu D-Max, which produces 140kW/450Nm, and it was night and day. The U9 is seriously lazy.

With a kerb weight of 2550kg, the Explore Pro variant is around 500kg heavier than mainstays of the segment like the Isuzu D-Max or Toyota HiLux, but it still feels like the claimed outputs might be optimistic.

We also couldn’t get anything better than 10L/100km out of the U9 in terms of fuel use, perhaps because we had to constantly urge it to accelerate.

That independent rear suspension setup, while generally comfortable, is floaty in corners and unsettled over rougher country roads. It doesn’t feel like the spring rates and damping are well tuned, and a couple hundred kilograms in the tray made it worse.

Then there is all the cabin tech’, which is pretty damn impressive at this price point but does have a few issues.

If it’s a sunny day, the digital rear-view mirror becomes virtually unusable due to glare and while you can switch it off, you’ve got to do it every time you start the car. Even without glare, the quality of the picture is average at best.

But our biggest bugbear is the chaotic ADAS, which is admittedly overbearing on most modern MGs but just feels worse in a big ute than it does in, say, a little MG4.

The beeps, buzzes, and warnings are seriously distracting and of all the cars and trucks we’ve tested recently, this was the worst ADAS calibration by far.

If your hand placement on the steering wheel happens to cover the camera sensor hidden within the cluster, which it does if you like resting atop the wheel on straight stretches of road, the car hits you with a loud distraction alert, even when you are looking directly at the road ahead.

Aside from the rear-view mirror and shouty ADAS, the interior is a pleasant place to be. It’s generally comfortable, absolutely brimming with technology (especially for a ute) and the sound system is decent.

But, we aren’t sure its good points outweigh all of the things that came to annoy us.

The MG U9 Explore Pro proves that an impressive spec sheet and aggressive pricing aren't always enough, but you’ve got to give them points for trying and we do think the model has potential.

While the independent rear suspension is a noble attempt to bring a more car-like ride to the ute segment, it’s let down by damping that we hope MG addresses.

We also hope (for the sake of people who bought one) that MG rolls out a software update to tone back the ADAS hysteria, allow owners to permanently disable the rear-view mirror camera, and wake up the powertrain.

Until then, it's a mixed bag that isn’t a particularly good family hauler, or work ute.