FIRST DRIVE: Omoda C9 ups the ante in Chinese luxury
The Omoda C9 is an even larger and flashier new Chery alternative. The brand revealed the model at last year’s Festival of Motoring and it ignited the imagination about how far the Chinese can play the luxury game.
It’s not on sale in SA yet, but we’ve had our first and very short taste of an Omoda C9 prototype ahead of its local sales launch in the next few months.
Chinese brands, and especially Chery, have been firing on all cylinders since their new dawns here in SA.
The first model to relaunch the new-look brand was the Tiggo 4 Pro crossover SUV. A whopping 10,054 units found homes in 2023, making it the 12th most popular car in the industry and the top Chinese seller in SA.
The brand also offers larger Tiggo 7 Pro and Tiggo 8 alternatives and expanded to include the new Omoda subsidiary with posher and boldly styled crossovers with signature honeycomb grilles. Chery is not done adding models as demonstrated by its plans that include the introduction of the new Jaecoo range of crossover SUVs.
The new Omoda C9 is a very good-looking car. The styling is characterised by cleaner, more suave design lines than Chery’s core range, coupled with superthin LED lighting upfront, a curved roof and a quartet of exhaust pipes at the back.
It’s a coupe-SUV and seemingly enjoys the benefits of the 2012 tie-up between Chery and JLR as it gives off Range Rover Velar vibes, including the popout door handles associated with the British brand.
It’s a spacious, leather-clad cabin, even for rear passengers, below a lowered roofline, and the boot looks capacious enough for family-sized luggage through a powered tailgate. All the rear seats are massageenabled, heated, cooled and electrically operated for recline, fore and aft movement.
In front is a floating bridge that separates the front passengers. The Omoda brand is more expressive, lifestyle orientated and designed to attract young or young-at-heart techies. It also has a panoramic sunroof, a curved screen, augmentedreality navigation, facial recognition, nine-speaker Sony sound system and 50W wireless ultrafast charger. More specifications will be uncovered at the launch, but the drive was more telling.
With a 400T lmodel badge, the Omoda C9 is powered by a turbocharged 2.0 petrol motor with 193kW and 400Nm on tap. It feeds an all-wheel drive system via an eight-speed automatic transmission. It’s not short on acceleration poke, though we were allocated the impractical tarmac of a business park as a test ground for the left-hand drive prototype. We’ll have to wait for the launch event to get to grips with its full power and fuel consumption potential.
Initial impressions are of a practical and sophisticated smoothie. It’ll be the most expensive Omoda to date when it launches in SA sometime in the second quarter of 2024. Indicative pricing suggests R800,00 to R850,000.