MG Motor is owned by SAIC in China and it retails its Hector by different names in different global markets. It’s called the Hector in India, its referred to as Wuling Almaz in Indonesia because it is sold under Wuling Motors. It is also referred to as Chevrolet Captiva in some Asian countries. All in all, it’s the same car with multiple names. And speaking about Indonesia, the Hector or the Wuling Almaz has just received a new top-of-the-line variant called the RS.
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The RS in its name stands for ‘Rising Star’ and as reported earlier, it has certainly received ADAS features. In layman’s terms, it consists of autonomous driving features.
Now, the autonomous driving thing isn’t something new for MG. The MG Gloster in India already boasts of ADAS ( Advanced Driver Assistance System ) tech which allows it to have adaptive cruise control, emergency braking, lane departure braking, blind-spot monitor, parking assist etc. The same features can also be found on the Almaz RS. For the Almaz RS, the company has christened the system as WISE (Wuling Interconnected Smart Eco-system).
Talking about the top of the line RS variant of the Wuling Almaz, apart from sounding a lot Audi-ish, it gets quite a few blacked-out pieces in place of Chrome that is seen on the Hector. The Grille is all-black, with very sleek DRLs flanking either side. It gets the usual spilt headlamp set up with a red stripe that runs across the bumper to bring out some sporty appeal and the radar housing is quite evident.
Talking about powertrains, the Wuling Almaz features a similar story under the hood. It gets the same 1.5L, 4 cyl petrol engine which puts out 140PS of peak power and 250Nm of peak torque. It is mated to a standard 6-speed manual transmission and a CVT, instead of a DCT which is offered in India. The Wuling Almaz is a petrol-only SUV.
The Hector can very much in the future feature the ADAS. All the more because one of its chief rivals, the Mahindra XUV 500 will most probably come with autonomous driving in its new-gen. It is also being reported that the upcoming MG Astor (Petrol ZS) is going to be equipped with ADAS as well.