Leapmotor T03 review

Well, you’d expect the T03 to be agile given its dimensions but that’s not how it feels behind the wheel. The steering is slow and dim-witted so you end up piling on tonnes of lock around tight bends. There are three settings - Standard, Sports and Comfort - which adjust the level of assistance - but none of them really change the character of the car in a tangible way.

That means you have to treat corners with caution instead of embracing them with any pep. No bad thing perhaps, but after a while tipping around turns with little or no feel for what the wheels are doing, you start to disconnect from the car. The face looks fun and whimsical; it’s a shame the handling can’t live up to it.

Oh dear. Does that mean it’s uncomfortable too?

No, actually. The T03 runs MacPherson strut front suspension and a torsion bar at the rear, and although it feels pretty taut, overall it shrugs off bumps and imperfections reasonably well. It helps that the seats are well padded.

Throttle response is punctual and the acceleration linear. Again, 0-62mph in 12.7 seconds is leisurely by any measure, but the T03’s perfectly adequate around town and it won’t get eaten up on the motorway either. Just don’t expect to be outside-laning it very much. We will say this though: the brakes are excellent. Not in terms of outright stopping power, they’re just really sweetly calibrated. So when you come up to a roundabout there’s plenty of feel to gauge your deceleration so you join in one fluid motion.

Leapmotor claims the T03 is one of the best in its class for noise levels. At high speed, we’d have to disagree: the buffeting off the wing mirrors is rather loud, although it’s much more tranquil at a more sedate pace. Or it would be if it weren’t for the mandatory augmented motor noise that kicks in from zero to 20mph. It sounds like a washing machine waking up at the start of its cycle. Bit irritating in a *checks notes*… car.

How’s the ADAS?

Not brilliant. The T03 gets 10 systems - basically the bare minimum allowed in Europe - including lane departure warning, lane keep assist, adaptive cruise control, forward collision warning, blind spot detection, and a system that’ll warn you about oncoming traffic when you open the door.

Unfortunately the integration of this tech is distracting, which defeats the whole object doesn’t it? Within three miles of our test run the driver-facing camera has picked up on a yawn and is flashing a fatigue warning. The lane keep is inconsistent and when it does lock onto a white line, the steering wheel releases back into your control like a jam jar lid finally giving way.

Then there’s the myriad of bongs and beeps telling you the speed limit, and that the speed has changed (some of which you have to be parked up to turn off). By the end of our drive the screen is telling us the ‘condition of the driver is abnormal’. Gee, thanks.

Ha! Is it efficient at least?

At 1,175kg, the Tee-nil-three is in Alpine A110 territory, so it ought to be decent. Over 50-ish miles of driving at mostly leisurely speeds (and on a mild day), we got 4.9mi/kWh without any real effort. That’s really good going, and actually suggests more range than the factory claim of 165 miles. We’d expect that figure to take a hit on faster roads and in colder temperatures, mind.

Anything else I should know?

We didn’t find the drive selector to be all that reliable: it’s a stalk behind the wheel with a button for the parking brake on the end. A couple of times when we tried to switch from drive to reverse and vice versa, it stuck us in neutral instead. Meanwhile the wipers and indicators are on the opposite stalk, so you have to be careful not to indicate left when it starts to rain.