Ford Endura vs MG Im6

What's the difference?

As much as I loved the Territory I have to say Ford’s Endura is a worthy replacement. This is an easy and enjoyable to drive, spacious, fuel efficient, safe SUV that’s great value with its big features list, long warranty and low servicing costs.

The sweet spot is the entry grade Trend as it get most of the equipment you'll find on the others, without paying more for bigger wheels or a sunroof.

A super solid first outing from the IM brand. Don't let the pricing fool you, there is still bang for buck on offer in the IM6 Performance, even if it at times feels a bit too digital for my tastes.

Is seems there’s not a single photo out there of the Endura that actually shows this SUV as it truly looks when seeing it with your own eyes.

Profile images make it look like an SUV version of a Ford Mondeo, while front-on shots make it look big and tall like a Ford Escape on steroids. Watching the video that goes with this story will probably give you the most truthful view short of seeing one on the road for yourself.

It’s a good-looking SUV with tough styling at the front with a giant version of the grille worn by the whole Ford car family, to the more delicately designed tailgate.

There are three grades in the Endura range – the entry level Trend, the sporty mid-spec ST-Line and the Titanium at the top.

The ST-Line is the most recognisable thanks to its body kit, blacked out mesh grille and black roof rails. You can spot a Titanium by its sunroof and its bright-finish 20-inch alloy wheels.

So, what are the Endura’s dimensions? Well, at just over 4.8m long, almost 2.2m wide (including the wing mirrors) and a bit more than 1.7m tall the Endura is almost the same size as the beloved Territory, even the wheelbases are within 6.0mm of each other with the new SUV’s being 2.8m long.

Talking of the Territory, if you’re familiar with that Aussie SUV’s insides then you’ll feel at home in the cabin of the Endura because of the way the display is integrated into the dash.

Have a look at the interior images – how much does that look like the screen in the Territory? I’m not a big fan of the air vents either side of the screen, but the dash and the centre console are otherwise beautifully symmetrical in their placement of buttons and dials.

There are high-quality feeling materials in most places. Yes, there are some hard plastics such as on the glove box lid, but there are soft-touch plastics on the dash and also on the rear window sills where many carmakers seem to use what feels like recycled takeaway containers thinking you might not notice.

Oh, and then there’s the gear shifter, or as Ford calls it the ‘E-Shifter’. It’s a rotary dial for the automatic transmission, rather than a lever. It looks a bit alien but it feels like a premium piece of equipment.

The interior of the three grades are almost identical with all of them coming with the chrome effect trim lining the centre console and the glossy black plastic around the cupholders up front. The ST-Line has aluminium-face pedals and a perforated leather-wrapped steering wheel, while the Titanium gets illuminated metal front door scuff plates.

Really, the main difference to the interiors are the seats – the Trend has cloth upholstery, the ST-Line has a suede-like material with leather accents and the Titanium has part leather perforated seats. All upholstery is black.

As for paint colours, there are 10 to choose from including 'Agate Black', 'Blue Metallic', 'Baltic Sea Green', 'Burgundy Velvet', 'Ingot Silver', 'Oxford White', 'Ruby Red' and 'Stone Grey'.

I feel almost mean saying this, because there will be plenty of people who like the way the IM6 looks, and I don’t want to rain on their parade. But… I’m not one of them.

It reminds me a bit of the pre-facelift Tesla Model Y, in that it’s largely feature-less and a bit blobby, and there’s not a sharp angle anywhere to be found on the thing. Premium to me means powerful and assured — picture just about any Audi — whereas I just find this a bit bland and soft.

Anyway, I do like the big alloys, the insulated glass roof and the light treatment front and rear.

And I like the cabin. The seats aren’t leather, but they’re super thick and comfortable, and there is a genuinely premium air in the cabin, helped by the acreage of screens and the quality elements, like the little door panels.

The doors unlatch electrically, matching the pop-out door handles outside, but they can be a bit fidgety. Someone from MG told me how they worked (you kind of cover the handle and let the door come to you) but I watched everyone else who tried to open them struggle. If you're at the point where you have to explain how a door handle works, you might have over-egged the pudding.

The second screen below the main one acts a bit like a mobile phone. You can alter your home screen widgets and access the main menu, even as Apple CarPlay is synched at the top. You’ll get used to it, I’m sure, but I found it to be a bit fidgety.

Actually it reminds me a little bit of the Lexus trackpad, or whatever that hateful system was called, where you controlled the main screen via a little mousepad thing, though happily it’s nowhere near as annoying as that was.

The Endura is longer than a Hyundai Santa Fe and shorter than a Mazda CX-8. The thing is both of those SUVs have seven seats, while the Endura has five. The only seven-seater SUV in Ford’s range is the Everest, which is a big off-roader.

If you don’t need the extra row, then you may see it as a bonus because not having folding seats back there means you’ve got decent boot space – 602 litres up to the cargo cover.

Legroom is also good in the back. I’m 191cm tall and have about 40mm of space between my knees and the seat back, while headroom even in the Titanium with its panoramic sun roof is ample.

As for storage in the cabin, there are four cupholders - two in the front and two in the back. A bottle holder in each door (which are on the small side), there’s a big centre console bin under the armrest, a storage tray under the dash, another one in front of the shifter and a covered dash-top area.

All Enduras come standard with two USB ports, three 12-volt outlets and a 230-volt outlet.

The IM6 measures 4904mm long, 1988mm wide and 1669mm tall, and it rides on a 2950mm wheelbase, with IM describing it as a "mid-large SUV", though I expect it will be classed as a medium SUV Australia.

That said, ICE and EV mid-size electric SUVs are not cut from the same cloth, with the latter making use of a flat floor to maximise space. And so it is with the IM6, where backseat room is pretty damn impressive. I’m 175cm, and I had no problem at all with legroom or headroom, plus the same plush seats from up there are in the back, too.

There are also air vents but no temperature controls, and while there are USB ports, there is no regular household-style plug in the cabin. 

The glass in the windows is laminated, while the roof is double glazed, which MG tells me is Australian summer-proof, but I guess we'll know for sure in a couple of months.

There’s no shortage of cargo room either. There’s a 32-litre frunk up front, and there’s 646 litres in the boot with the rear seats in place. They’re 60/40 split, and if you drop them, luggage space grows to 1621 litres.

The towing capacity is a braked 1500kg, too, but I don’t expect to see many of these towing a camper trailer around.

Premium play means more premium prices, and my IM6 Performance will set you back $80,990 on the road. That might have just sent your eyebrows skyward, but keep in mind it’s faster than some Ferraris, and is swimming with high-end tech, so the bang-for-buck factor is actually still pretty good.

There are cheaper ones, too. The single-motor Premium grade is $60,990 drive-away, albeit with less power and slower charging. Then there’s the Platinum, with a bigger battery and faster charging, which is $69,990

The Performance, though, gets everything IM has to give, including an 800-volt architecture, which means super-fast charging, as well as twin motors, brutal acceleration, a decent driving range and adaptive air suspension.

Elsewhere, you get LED lighting, a big and insulated glass roof, and 20-inch alloy wheels. Inside, there are thick and soft synthetic leather seats that are heated and cooled in both rows, a banging 20-speaker sound system, and wireless charging to pair with wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto.

There’s also 'active noise cancellation', and a seat-aware digital assistant which is about the best, and fastest, I’ve ever used. The IM6’s speaker system can locate where a voice is coming from, so any passenger can use the assistant. For example, if you’re in the backseat and say 'hey IM, lower my window', only your window opens. It’s a technology that I specifically remember the German brands crowing about not so long ago.

There’s also a 10.5-inch central touchscreen that controls much of the vast 26.3-inch screen that runs from in front of the driver to the centre of the cabin, as well as clever little magnets embedded in the dash in front of the driver, as well as in the back of the front seat headrests, that are designed to hold phones, iPads or other little accessories.

Also cool is the IM6’s self-parking tech, but there’s also a relatively useless crab walk function, which leans on the rear-wheel steering system to drive diagonally at slow speeds. I’m still not entirely sure when you’d use that one, to be honest.

Honestly, it’s a lot of stuff, and a lot of tech.

The Endura has a 2.0-litre turbo-diesel four-cylinder engine making 140kW of power and 400Nm of torque. That torque peak comes in low at 2000rpm which is where it’s most useful for towing and accelerating off the line.

Braked towing capacity for the Endura is 2000kg.

All Enduras have an eight-speed automatic and you can choose between front-wheel drive or all-wheel drive.

This is the real party trick of the IM6, because there’s a nuclear power plant under the metal somewhere. All up, the twin-motor setup produces a total 578kW and 802Nm, though I suspect you’re never accessing all the grunt all at once. Still, 100km/h zips by in 3.4 seconds, and the top speed is 239km/h. For the record, that’s exactly as fast the Ferrari Roma Spider I recently handed back, so yeah, it’s properly supercar quick.

The diesel engine and the eight-speed auto transmission make an efficient team with claimed fuel economy for the front-wheel drive and all-wheel drive being the same at 6.7L/100km over a combination of open and urban roads.

The launch saw me drive the Endura in Trend FWD, ST-Line AWD and Titanium AWD and the trip computers were reporting a couple of litres more than this, but this would certainly be because of the winding, hilly country roads, and the driver.

The Endura has a 64-litre fuel tank.

Also on board is a 100kWh Nickel-Cobalt-Magnesium battery that produces a WLTP driving range of 505kms. Pretty good.

Charging is strong, too. The high-tech platform allows for 396kW DC fast charging, which is faster than what is currently offered in Australia. The claim is 30-80 per cent charged in 15 minutes. There’s also an external vehicle-to-load (V2L) port.

There’s lots of good news here. The diesel engine is quiet. The cabin is well insulated. Both of those combined saw me on one occasion press the start button not realising the engine was already running. That was in the FWD Trend grade, too. The ST-Line and Titanium have even better levels of insulation.

Steering is excellent – it’s weighted well, accurate, and it’s easy to turn the steering wheel in car parks or in three-point turns.

The ride is comfortable in all grades, but most of all in the Trend and Titanium, while the ST-Line has firmer sports suspension. But that makes it the most fun to drive in the corners where it handles impressively well for a 4.8m long SUV.

Visibility all-round is also outstanding. The side windows are large, the windscreen feels expansive with pillars that don’t get in the way, the dash is low and you sit quite high. While you are high up, the Endura doesn’t feel like a truck to drive. And that goes for the engine too, I’ve already mentioned how quite it is, but it’s smooth as well.

The engine could do with more grunt, though. There were times climbing hills in the overtaking lane that a bit more oomph would have made me feel a little less concerned that we weren’t going to make it past that semi-trailer before his lane ran out.

That was with two people on board and a couple of bags. The Trend FWD is the lightest at 1976kg while the Titanium AWD is 100kg heavier. That’s pretty heavy. The heaviest Mazda CX-9 (a bigger SUV with seven seats) for example weighs 1924kg. I wonder how the Endura would go fully loaded up with family and holiday gear, plus a boat on the back?

AWD or FWD? Well, they both use the same amount of fuel, so it just comes down to, can you afford it?

The FWD Trend I drove struggled for traction under harder acceleration from a standstill. The AWD ST-Line and Titanium I tested had no issues with traction at all. An AWD Trend is where I’d put my money.

Keep in mind the Endura isn’t an off-roader. The AWD system helps in the wet and on gravel, but its lowish ground clearance will prevent it from climbing anything more adventurous than a gutter. Unladen the AWD Endura’s belly hangs 193mm off the ground, while the FWD’s ground clearance is 186mm.

First things first, don't get too distracted by the word "performance" here. The IM6 doesn't act like a performance car, it feels bit too plush, and bit too digital, for that.

But that's not necessarily a bad thing. Performance cars are often loud, raucous and uncomfortable, and the IM6 is none of those things. Instead, those mountains of power and torque make silky, silent progress absolutely effortless, which feels pretty premium to me.

MG makes a big deal of how much work went into insulating the cabin from noise – with active noise cancellation joined by double-paned insulated glass – and it is a properly calming and quiet space.

Also strong is the suspension, with the adaptive air setup soaking up most bumps and bruises, but I found it can clang over really solid bumps, sounding like it's bouncing off a stopper. The steering is solid, too, with a nice weight, if not overly talkative in the feedback department, while the rear-wheel steering helps eat into the turning circle for tight three-point turns.

The downside, though, is that it all feels a little too digital, and like there's been a little too much overthinking gone into it. Having to push a button to see behind you in a hurry is bonkers (see my explanation in the Safety section below), and the secondary screen is more annoying than intuitive. And there were several bings or bongs I couldn't even identify. All of which interrupts the otherwise calming nature of the drive experience.

There is a long list of safety aids on the IM6, and I won't detail the lot here. But I will call out a couple of curious mentions.

As always, the driver distraction warning is annoying, but can be switched off. And MG also counts the IM platform, or what it calls a digital chassis, as part of the safety offering. It has its own digital brain that adapts the air suspension, the rear-wheel steering and the active safety kit on the fly.

The other curiosity is the weird way you see out the back. Rather than fit a digital rear-view mirror to counteract the almost non-existent rear vision, you instead push up on a little toggle on the steering wheel to bring up a live view of what's happening behind you on the central screen.

The Endura is covered by Ford’s five-year/unlimited kilometre warranty. Servicing is recommended every 12 months or 15,000km and is capped at $299 for the first four services.

The IM6 is covered by a five-year, unlimited-kilometre warranty, rather than MG’S 10-year term. Capped-price servicing is offered for the first five years, with your total bill just under $3000. The service intervals are 20,000kms or 12 months.