Design driven: Jaecoo 7

You’d be forgiven for not recognising the name adorning the ‘waterfall grille’ of the Jaecoo 7. Born of parent company Chery, it’s part of a new dual brand venture Omoda & Jaecoo – the former being a compact SUV brand and the latter targeting the premium off-roader segment.

To showcase the ability of the Jaecoo 7 SHS (super hybrid system) a group of journalists from right-hand drive markets were assembled in South Africa to drive the famed Garden Route. Every country has their own Route 66 but the Garden Route’s changing landscape could pass for scenery in Australia, America and Scotland.

From Cape Town to Port Elizabeth, the mission was to see how many miles you could get out of a tank of fuel and a fully charged plug-in hybrid battery.

Since the roads are wide, smooth and dead straight for miles, South Africa has a fairly unique driving culture in that it’s customary to pull over to the left and straddle the hard shoulder when a car behind wants to overtake. No need for risky manoeuvres with minimal visibility around a vehicle in front, even lorries give way.

After little more than half an hour, this novelty turned into an opportunity and the idea of an economical drive to maximise range was left far behind in Cape Town. For the sake of all my fellow lead-footers out there, the target shifted away from endurance to speed.

With this strategy, my car covered a grand total of 560miles/900km before needing to be refuelled while other, more economical drivers managed 745miles/1200km.

The hybrid system makes the family SUV surprisingly quick. When the car is using the engine or relying solely on the battery there’s barely a distinguishable difference in mechanical noise reaching the cabin. On harsher bits of road and at higher speeds, road noise creeps in a little more than you’d like.

Unavoidably, some stretches of road were less road and more washboard dirt track, so hitting the right speed to knock out reverberation kicked up a concerning amount of dust. The air purification system in the top spec trim is something that will rarely be appreciated somewhere like the UK, but on these roads it was a necessity.

Cutting through the African landscape, the Jaecoo 7 looks like it would be just as at home in America with its muscular SUV stance.

Catch a glimpse from behind though and it looks suspiciously like a Range Rover Evoque with a slightly taller rear window. There’s no coincidence here since Jaecoo is positioning itself to rival established manufacturers with competitively priced models.

This is one of the most generously equipped SUVs for the pricepoint, £35,000 for the top spec plug-in hybrid. Unlike many cars in this class that offer sunroofs as an optional extra with the caveat that rear headroom will be sacrificed, a panoramic opening sunroof is standard fitment across the range and leaves ample headroom for the tallest passengers.

The standout feature of the interior space is the 14.8-inch touchscreen. The iPad-like display is intuitive like a phone or tablet with swipe down shortcut menus and notifications, swipe up climate controls and apps on the homescreen.

For older generations, this operational style may take a little longer to get used to but for those who grew up using handheld devices, the system will feel natural.

Given there’s so much real estate, it’s likely the layout will be tweaked in future iterations to include things like a fixed shortcut menu for climate controls even when the system is running Apple CarPlay or Android Auto.

In front of the driver, there’s a 10.25-inch digital display and a head-up display with the top trim. When you flick the indicator on and start turning, the central screen switches to display three different angles of the vehicle.

It’s useful for tight corners where you’re conscious of clipping the alloys or for off-roading to see which way the wheels are pointing – the car graphic can be set to transparent so you can see all four wheels.

After turning, the 360 degree camera displays linger a little too long which can be a pain for confusing junctions where you want to follow navigation on the screen.

For the vast majority of the user experience, much of it can be customised or turned off to your preference. When the car restarts, all default safety settings come back on again but once you learn where they’re located it’s a quick job to disable them. Amusingly, the driver monitor gets very frustrated when you’re looking for its off button.

The car itself doesn’t have an on/off button and a column shifter handles the gears so the central arm rest is freed up for a large wireless phone charging pad, a couple of cupholders and a few physical shortcut buttons. There’s also a huge storage space underneath the centre console.

A genius bit of safety kit is the blind spot monitoring system. In the front, it works as normal, showing up on the outer corner of the wing mirrors. In the back, there’s a piece of decorative plastic trim in front of the door handle, if a vehicle is approaching, three strips of orange light illuminate to alert the rear passenger.

It’s a beautifully disguised bit of safety kit that is genuinely useful, perfectly executed and gives you the confidence that kids in the back will immediately understand the warning.

This family-friendly essence can be felt throughout the vehicle in touches like the boot cover which doubles as a projector screen. It attaches to clips at the bottom of the boot then hooks on to the boot lid to create your very own travelling cinema. While it’s yet to be released, Jaecoo is exploring offering its own projector to go with it.

Few, if any, cars in this segment are able to match the Jaecoo 7 on value for money. As a family car or commuter vehicle, it’s hugely economical, plenty spacious and its modern infotainment system feels targeted at younger owners. Brand loyalty and badge-bias seem to be the only things standing in its way.