MG is bringing a ute to Australia... but which one?

Like most of China’s challenger brands, MG has lofty goals.

The former British marque, which just recently launched one of the world’s few two-door electric performance cars into the Australian market in the form of the shapely MG Cyberster, is reportedly getting ready to enter a very different segment – one with substantially more commercial importance.

MG wants a ute for Australia.

Not just any ute: a dual-cab, the most popular bodystyle for privately-owned pickup utilities in this country. Why? Because the brand’s local boss Peter Ciao says MG will struggle to achieve its goal of being a top-five brand in Australia if it doesn’t have a dual-cab ute in the Aussie product portfolio. It's a goal MG hopes to hit by 2027, with a secondary goal of becoming a top-three brand by 2030.

With the calendar about to click over into 2025, a ‘by 2027’ deadline sounds awfully close. It means MG’s ute will need to arrive within the next 24 months, ideally within the next 12 if it’s to lodge a full year of sales and contribute as much as it can to MG’s Australian sales ledger in 2026. The clock is ticking, but MG does have the ability to move quickly.

Product development lead times in China are substantially quicker than that of other car-producing nations, but MG also has the advantage of being able to adapt existing product from the broader brand network of its owner, the Chinese automotive juggernaut SAIC.

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MG already has a ute in the Thai market, the MG Extender, however that product is a rebadge of the T60 Max (above) that’s sold by LDV, another SAIC subsidiary, which is already on the road in Australia. MG's Australia-bound ute is expected to be something quite different.

A more likely candidate is the Maxus eTerron 9 (top and below), an electrified dual-cab pickup utility which could hold potential for an MG rebadge for Australia given Maxus is another corporate cousin of MG. With a big battery and electric motors driving its wheels, the eTerron 9 would also fit in neatly alongside MG’s other new-energy vehicles like the MG ZS, MG4 and Cyberster.

A diesel-powered version dubbed the Terron 9 is also set to enter production soon, replacing the eTerron 9’s 325kW dual-motor powertrain and 102kWh battery pack with a more conventional 163kW 2.5-litre turbodiesel driving all four wheels. Both are expected to boast a 3500kg towing capacity.

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The catch? LDV's local distributor Ateco has already committed to bringing the eTerron 9 and the diesel-powered Terron 9 to Australia badged as LDVs (below), meaning MG – whose presence in Australia is fully backed by SAIC and is managed separately to LDV – will either need to do something special to set its version of that ute apart from its LDV equivalent, or will have to bring a wholly different vehicle to our shores altogether. If the latter is the case it would have to be something we haven’t seen yet, as SAIC’s only other mid-size pickup besides the T60 and eTerron 9 is the Wuling Zhengtu: a homely-looking ultra-utilitarian ute that’s powered by a 72kW 1.5-litre petrol engine driving only the rear wheels.

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MG’s leadership isn’t wrong about the commercial importance of putting a ute in its showrooms. Right now, Mitsubishi sits in fifth place in the year-to-date sales figures with a tally of 62,588 vehicles sold, and the Triton accounts for just under 15,000 of that total – or nearly a quarter of all Mitsubishis sold in this country. Meanwhile Toyota, which dominates the 2024 sales charts with more than 202,000 units sold to the end of October, attributes 28 percent of its sales volume to the Hilux and 70-Series Landcruiser ute.

If MG was able to see similar percentages it might not be enough to boost it into the top five (its current year-to-date sales tally is 41,302 cars and SUVs), but it would certainly put it within striking distance of rivals like Hyundai, which currently sits in sixth place without a ute in its lineup.