Jaecoo 5 review

It’s a smaller version of the Jaecoo 7, AKA that Evoque lookalike you’ve seen absolutely everywhere lately. The 7 has leapt from complete obscurity to being the UK’s second best-selling car in barely more than a year, so expect to see the follow-up 5 parked outside every single Aldi in short order.

This one’s of similar size to the VW T-Roc and Ford Puma crossovers, and compact SUVs such as the Nissan Qashqai, Skoda Karoq and Hyundai Kona. Not to mention about a million others.

Jaecoo’s two pillars are styling and value; so a design that isn’t embarrassing to be seen in, and a price that mops up any lingering sheepishness like a fast-acting athlete’s foot cream. Most of the cars the Jaecoo 5 competes with are thirty grand and up – this starts at £24,555.

Let me guess, the basic elevator pitch is ‘cheap, roomy, full of tech’?

In a nutshell. You’ll be hard-pressed to find a brand new car that’ll offer as much space as the 5 does for that amount of money, although the Kona runs it close. And once you’ve been suckered in by the big boot, that 13.2in screen and seven-year/100,000-mile warranty are poised to land the killer blow.

The standard car is called Pure, but the Luxury trim is the one that stands out with its heated and ventilated front seats, eight-speaker Sony audio system and wireless phone charging. Naturally it’s a bit dearer, but still remarkably cheap at £28,050.

Times are hard, and with the promise of kit and space for relatively little outlay it’s no wonder people are taking a chance on the Jane Doe option.

On the value for money thing… for it to be ‘value’, it also has to be ‘good.’

Agreed.

… so is it?

Oh not by a long shot. Did you see the score at the top of the page?

Look, there’s a type of car buyer that isn’t interested in cars and never will be. That’s fair enough. And to them a car is a box on wheels; a heap of metal that needs to go from point A to point B with room for the dog, and if possible, link to a phone. Handling means nothing. Comfort barely registers. They stopped reading three paragraphs ago when they saw the price.

But being indifferent about cars shouldn’t mean you’re punished for it – the Jaecoo 5 has zero talent. Aside from maybe size. And those stately looks.

It’s front-wheel drive. A modest 141bhp and 203lb ft of torque is supplied by a 1.6-litre four-cylinder turbo petrol from parent company Chery, though the automatic seven-speed gearbox is the work of German firm Getrag. Together they absolutely butcher the power delivery, so either you go gently and endure the drunken gearbox, or thrash it and wake the dead. Some choice.

The steering is plagued with lifeless travel; the suspension – supposedly optimised for the UK and Europe – feels like it’s done time in a Category A prison; the brakes are adequate, but the pedal’s return spring seems to have been transplanted from a ballpoint pen. Dynamically it’s completely hopeless.

Yikes. Does the interior salvage it?

Hardly. Even the Luxury 5 is a morass of gloss black, false leather and plastic materials, including the budget stuff on the steering wheel that creaks as you press it. Other than that, build quality is fine. It’s just very bland.

You’d expect the touchscreen to be all singing and all dancing, but no: aside from a shortcut to the climate control at the bottom, virtually all the functionality and settings are plonked into a series of lists. Sigh. The highlight is a 540-degree camera system that projects a 3D model of the car into virtual surroundings on the screen. Cool? Kinda. Useful? You be the judge.

More often than not the speed limit warning gets the speed wrong, the ambient lighting has a habit of going AWOL, and to cap it all off the trip computer on our test car displayed miles but actually measured kilometres. If Jaecoo can’t even get that right…

Uh oh. Anything else I should know?

Let’s see… supposedly the 1.6 will do 41mpg, but who knows if the 35.3mpg we saw on our mixed test run was actually furlongs per pint.

There’s also a more expensive 1.5-litre hybrid with 224bhp, so maybe that’s the silver bullet that magically fixes everything. It's meant to be good for 53mpg too. And there's an electric one called the Jaecoo E5, which shares a name with the Omoda E5… because they’re basically the same car. The powertrain on that is far more mature than the ICE one deployed here.

Jaecoo is clearly onto something: 7 sales are flying and the clean-cut look of the 5 is surely going to grab the attention of people who want something a tad smaller on a tight budget. Temu Range Rover is actually meant as a compliment.

That said, it’s not often that a car brings as few redeeming qualities to the table as the Jaecoo 5. Sweet mercy. It’s slow, unrefined, dynamically inept, and only truly comfortable when the road is as flat as a pancake. Which in Britain is never.

The tech is also a let-down when you really think about what’s there: even some of the basics haven’t been done properly and alarmingly little attention has been paid to making the interface truly user friendly.

So are you actually getting bang for your buck? Nope. Get a Duster for value, get a Kona for efficiency, or get a Puma for fun.