Folks - take a deep breath and pour a cup of tea - this may take a while and not cover the car's features as you want, but hey - it's an honest view! Please feel free to reply to this post with any questions.
Well, I've had my test drive of the new IM5 at Drive MG Bristol North. So, as promised, here are my impressions of the car, bearing in mind my yardstick is my current car, an MG4 Trophy LR, and the weather was atrocious with wind and rain coming and going throughout the drive. The demonstrator car I got to drive was indeed the 100 LR version, the very version I was interested in, should I be impressed enough.
So, my first impression is that the photos I have seen of the car really don't do it justice. My initial fear was that it would possibly look too much like a Tesla Model 3. In a way, I suppose there is a resemblance but only a passing one. A look down the side of the car from front to back gives a view of a seemingly muscular back end. The body flares out over the rear wheels in a similar way to the Cyberster, but in a more "muscle car" sort of way. So far, I'm liking what I see, despite the fact that this demonstrator was in white, not my favourite colour for a car, but it still carries it well. Remaining at the front for now, the car looks wide. Not overly so, just enough to look purposeful I think.
Round at the back, there's a really nice look about it. There are influences from Porsche in the rear wing/lip and maybe Maserati when you take in those slightly bulbous rear arches. The overall impression though, is that it reminds me of Aston Martin styling - no bad thing. The curving brake light right across the rear lip looks fantastic in my opinion anyway.
OK, onto the interior. This demonstrator had the grey interior, which is also the colour I would choose. I can't imagine a white interior would stay that way for long once kids and possibly a dog get stuck into it! My first surprise here is that the carpets weren't the thick deep pile carpets I was expecting, but a more sensible material similar to that in the MG4. The salesman, Adam, believes the deep pile carpets seen in some of the reviews are actually the mats that can be added. We'll see when all the accessories start to become available.
Despite one particular reviewer complaining there was no room to put your feet if you sit in the back, my wife was happy to prove that opinion was rubbish. She had more than enough room. I suppose if you are 6 foot 10 inches tall, you'd have the driver's seat slammed to the floor and then it could be an issue for a giraffe sat in the back, but for my driving position, no issue at all. There is plenty of room in the back. Sitting in the front and ignoring all the gadgets for now, the seats seem comfortable enough with the driver's seat being adjustable in almost every plane, and adjustable simply by moving a finger on the centre controls screen over a picture of the seat. It also has several (four I think?) driver position memories.
Looking around the cabin, it's very light and airy, despite the grey interior. This is mainly because of the huge panoramic glass roof (tinted) but also because the headlining and upper part of the trim is a very light off-white sort of colour.
Right, onto the first negative, for me at least, and it seems to be a recurring theme. Whereas the rear window seems quite adequate from outside, but inside from the driver's side, not so. The hatch back has such a shallow angle that when viewed in the (token) rear view mirror the rear screen has very little height. Combine that with high rear seat backs and headrests then the rear window just serves as a way of looking into the rear boot space from outside. Luckily, a simple nudge of the steering wheel's right hand rotary knob thing (!) brings up a central rear camera view, so you should be able to see that DROF on the front of the HGV hugging the rear bumper without any problem. While we're on the subject of any downsides to this car, it doesn't have any physical switches other than the two steering column stalks and two of the forementioned rotary knob things. Oh, and there's no glove box, although there is a large storage area under the central display. Hey, who stores gloves in the car anyway?
Let's get onto the actual driving experience. I found the steering a little heavy initially, but this can be lightened up via the central display screen - let's call it the engineering display. The large wide screen display is great. All the apps and other frivolous nonsense (sorry!) are displayed on the left side of the screen but more important driving related information is on the touch sensitive right hand side where it is easily seen by the driver. The central display screen is the screen that will get used the most, it has almost all the configurable aspects available on it.
I have to say that the radar display, showing the position of other vehicles and pedestrians, is on a par, if not superior, to the display in my son's Tesla Model 3. All the displays in fact were very crisp, clear and bright. Coming from the MG4 to this is like the step up from Windows 95 to Windows 11. It actually boots up in less time than it takes to put on a seat belt - unlike the MG4 which takes a whole council worker's breaktime!
The actual drive was, despite the inclement weather, rather an enjoyable experience to be honest, even when I discovered the pitfalls of unleashing 400 hp on wet roads! The acceleration of this car is breathtaking, and it wasn't even the performance version. I hesitate to surmise how long my licence would last if I had one of those! Despite that however, I thought the car felt very sure footed, even over uneven road surfaces, again despite certain "reviewers".
I gave the manouvering capabilities of this car a bit of a workout and was pleasantly surprised. It'll do a u turn almost as easily as a London taxi. I didn't test out the crab mode or parking facility as the day is only so long, but low speed handling is remarkably easy for such a heavy (I imagine) car.
Sorry to have rambled on and not really given out any real reviewer observations, but I think I can honestly say that this car is the most technologically advanced car I've ever driven and one of the most enjoyable test drives I've had.
So to sum up, good points are comfort, styling, performance, value for money and lots of features to discover along the way, including an integral dashcam. Bad points? None I would call bad, but there's the restricted rear view, lack of physical buttons (if that's a problem for you), no glove compartment but plenty of other storage space. Perhaps another disappointing area is the lack of colour options. White, black grey or blue seems a little limited. Interesting thing about the colour - I'll tell you at the end of this diatribe! Any other negative points would simply be down to personal preferences.
So, the 64 million dollar question would have to be, do I buy one? Errrr, resounding YES! Deposit has been placed on a Nevis Blue 100LR. I have the honour of being Drive MG North Bristol's first IM5 customer - yaay, go me! Deliveries of customer cars are expected in around 10 to 12 weeks apparently.
Finally (you'll be pleased to hear) I'd like to thank Adam and Leighton at said dealership for the friendly, non-pushy attitude whilst I was there (coffee and hot chocolate wasn't bad either!).
Finally finally (you thought I'd forgotten, hadn't you), a snippet of info regarding colour choice. As you know, if you've been reading up about the car, any colour choice other than white costs an extra £545. However, if you can go through the Affinity scheme, not only do you save £7.5K on the price of the car, the paint option is also free.
Sorry about the length of this post!
. Suits my needs better these days too with lots of longer distance motorway journeys . It will cost me far less on a 2 year lease than my Xpower has cost over 2 years on PCP but to be fair that was bad timing on my purchase…. I was too eager to get one early 
