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| If you are talking bang for buck, you could argue the Cherry Tiggo lags the Toyota Rav4 it imitates by just this much. |
This is the price of the new 1.6 Chery Tiggo VVT and I admit taking the key from the media fleet manager (and former Witness Motoring editor) Dave Fall with a grimace.
Could he really not give me the Ford Kuga instead for my business trip up the coast? We have the previous generation Tiggo in the family and I’ve driven it, lots, I nagged.
But Fall was firm: “Just go push that go-faster pedal as hard as you like and tell people about it,” he
ordered.
So I did. And my goodness golly, what a nice surprise the Chery Tiggo turned out to be in the strong Cape winds at highway speeds, and belting along over dirt roads.
The niggle list
For less than R240 k there will, of course, be niggles, so let’s start with those I noted en route in the Tiggo.• The plastics are hard and old-fashioned — fair enough at these bargain prices — but the edges are also not beveled, which gives the otherwise neat interior that slightly tacky, unfinished look.
• On paper, the 1 598 cc engine with continuously variable valves makes a respectable 93 kW and 160 Nm, but on tar you need to get the rev needle to about 5 000 to feel any of this with the 1 343 kg weight of the car, excluding my luggage. With the fuel price inland at well over R12 a litre, this is not as big an issue as it would have been with cheap fuel.
• The power steering to those 16-inch wheels gets very light at speed over the rough stuff. And that is it, three niggles that are all forgiven when you bear the price in mind.
The wow factors
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| Bluetooth pairing is super fast, thanks to a Parrot Evo built into the steering wheel |
The Tiggo also uses a Parrot system, in this case the tiny Evo unit, which is built neatly into the multi-function steering wheel. To pair the car’s six speakers to your phone, simply tell your phone to look for devices, punch in 1234 and your are linked. Compare this to the GWM Steed 6, where not even the dealer can figure out how to get the system to work. Note, the Parrot will only link your phone, not your music files. For that you have to use the small USB cable, sold with the car.
• While on the GWM, and its “Chinglish” manual we quoted in the Wheels supplement, the manual in the Chery is written in very good English. No “when riding pregnant woman” here, as is the case in the competitor’s often very funny but also quite dangerous attempt at translation.
• The air conditioner works so well it can cause frostbite, and does not act like an anchor on performance when switched on.
• The biggest wow factor comes with the road-holding. And for once, it was not just me who was impressed. Karting correspondent Stuart Johnston and KZN-based Gavin Foster also had to go a bit faster than normal over dirt.
This was Johnston’s summary on Cars.co.za: “As the ruts turned to sloots, and wash-aways turned to mini-earth banks, this little Chinese designed and built Tiggo absorbed everything. I kid you not, obstacles that would have had many a European-orientated compact SUV threatening to poke suspension struts through the fenders were dealt with with contemptuous ease by the Chery.
“It’s almost as if it had been specced as a Dakar support vehicle. I found it much more pleasant on dirt than on tar!
“So, prospective Chery Tiggo owners, rejoice in the fact that while this is in no way a real off-roader (it’s front-wheel drive), it is superbly competent on those rippled, ungraded dirt roads where you sometimes need to venture over a weekend, either to get away from it all or to see relatives who never joined the rat race in the first place.”
To Johnston’s good impressions I can add the lack of 4x4 or AWD systems will not be a problem when you are driving on muddy roads, as lashings of revs will see the front wheels pull the light car through.
Note the word “light”, for any baggage will put the brakes on this type of advanced mud driving.
City driving
While the Tiggo comes into its own over the rough stuff and can be raced through mud by the average farmer’s wife, most owners who buy in this market will never go off tar and it is for them that the Tiggo will ensure smiley driving for a long time to come.The Chery Tiggo comes standard with a transponder key, the leatherette seats do not heat up like real leather would and the rev counter is on the right, where most cars in the West have the speed. Thus you can drive like a trucker to save fuel — keeping the rev needle at just under 3 000 rpm, or 110 km/h, which is where the Tiggo gives the most torque and uses the least fuel. On my West Coast drive, I used these and the other six tricks we listed in Wheels on Thursday to get over 540 from three quarters of the 57-litre tank.
