Fashion can be so capricious. Not even two years ago, MPVs looked a dead cert to join two-door estates and mid-market coupés on the format scrapheap, yet now the class is bursting with activity. Apparently we have Chinese businessmen to thank(or otherwise). Don’t get rid of your skinny jeans just yet, then, I suppose.
Following the airport-bound Mercedes-Benz EQV, nostalgia-fuelled Volkswagen ID Buzz and limousine-challenging Lexus LM into the UK is the Maxus Mifa 9.
Maxus is a brand that may be familiar from its eDeliver range of electric vans and tippers and the T90EV, the first electric pick-up truck offered in the UK, albeit a very poor one. It has a complex heritage, as evidenced by the fact that the Mifa is sold in Asia as an MG and in Australia as an LDV. Yes, as in Birmingham’s deceased maker of spit-and-sawdust vans, itself formed when the respective truck divisions of British Leyland and Dutch firm Daf merged in the 1980s. Its assets were bought by Chinese giant SAIC after its 2009 bankruptcy, joined two years later by MG. South-east Asia also gets an MG version of the T90EV, by the way, called the Extender. Righty-ho…
Anyway, it’s now a significant player in the UK, albeit through a concessionaire, Harris Group of Ireland, with a technical centre in Liverpool and more than 60 dealers. Sales rose by 46% last year and are expected to do so again by 60% this year, as evidenced by a sales total of more than 1250 vehicles already. Harris told me it will sell the Mifa to families, chauffeurs, hotels and taxis, although I’m doubtful about that first claim, given that it’s playing in the £70k arena.
