Jolion a spunky small SUV
Haval is moving in leaps and bounds. Nile Bijoux takes the new Jolion Ultra for a spin.
China’s Great Wall Motors (GWM) is on a roll at the moment. We’ve driven the GWMbranded Cannon ute, and now it’s time for the newly-minted Haval Jolion, which replaces the outgoing H2. Not the Hummer.
On the outside
Haval reportedly hired a designer from Jaguar a few years back, which would explain a lot of the good-looking machinery coming out of its factories.
The Jolion features plenty of chrome in the grille along with four main headlight bulbs per cluster. There’s a touch of Hyundai around the styling, as well as slight hints of Volvo in the T-shaped DRLs splitting the headlights (far from a bad thing).
Vertical slashes down each corner contain more DRLs while the indicators are three bars per side, nestled under the T in the headlight cluster.
Around the back are tail lights shaped like an engineer’s square, which extend into the bootlid and around the edges of the body.
The 18-inch rims that come on the Ultra-spec Jolion look as good as anything from other major brands, with an interesting design. Kumho Solus HS63 rubber comes standard as well.
On the inside
That Jaguar influence is more apparent inside Joe-the-Lion, with a small, metallic rotary dial responsible for changing gears, a nicely textured leatherette dashboard with a few touch controls for air conditioning, and a power button for the audio system, and a 12.3-inch infotainment screen (10.25 inches on Premium and Lux models).
The seats are supportive and comfy, with the driver getting six-way electronic control over the position. Passengers make do with four-way manual adjustability.
Wireless phone charging is standard on Ultra models, as is a head-up display. There is plenty of leg- and headroom in the back seats, a fold-down pair of cupholders in the middle seat, and storage space under the seats.
It looks fantastic, but it’s not quite as nice to use. The lack of physical controls for the media system means the only way to change the volume is on the steering wheel and there aren’t any shortcut buttons like there were on the Cannon.
That means to switch on something like the heated seats, you have to dive into a few different settings menus via the touchscreen, which is annoying. Same goes for finding the drive modes, of which there are four – Eco, Normal, Sport and Snow.
Under the bonnet
Alongside the Jaguar hire, Haval also pulled engineering expertise from Daimler and BMW. Unfortunately, the Jolion came a bit early to take full advantage of that, with all variants getting the same 1.5-litre turbo four as the old H2, making a respectable 110kW/210Nm.
It’s paired with a seven-speed dual-clutch automatic, which does its job and not much more. Every Jolion is front-wheel-drive as well.
More impressive is the sheer amount of active safety gubbins Haval has managed to cram into this little SUV.
Any safety acronym you can think of is here, from AEB and TCS to HHC, LKA and IACC. That’s autonomous emergency braking, traction control system, hill-hold control, lane-keep assist, and ‘‘intelligent active cruise control’’, and they’re just a handful of what’s included. Most are switchable too.
The only thing that isn’t standard on all models is a 360-degree monitoring system, the base Premium making do with a reversing camera only.
On the road
The engine might be a carryover from the H2, but the chassis is the company’s new (and unfortunately named) Lemon platform, which is probably the Jolion’s strongest point, behind the design. The chassis is surprisingly eager, happy to be tossed around a bit but still maintaining a good degree of comfort and flexibility. It’s clear there is some German influence going on in the mechanical side of things.
The engine provides good thrust off the line and, although the dual-clutch gearbox isn’t as snappy as something from Volkswagen, it’s fine for general use. Don’t bother with the flappy paddles, just let the transmission do its thing.
All that active safety stuff works well too, for the most part. The lane-keep and active cruise control combination seems to be able to read upcoming corners in the road and slow the car ahead of time, but it’s a bit eager, often braking from 100kmh to 90kmh for a bend that’s barely curved. That’s easily remedied by keeping the active cruise on but deactivating the lane-keep.
By far the most annoying is the forward collision warning. It will incessantly chime if it thinks you’re too close to the car ahead while driving above speeds of about 60kmh, and it only stops for a few seconds before starting back up. The theory behind the tech is sound – stop tailgating, you muppet – but it could be implemented better. At least you can drown the bongs out with music.
Verdict
Although there are flaws in the Jolion, there are many good points. And, to be honest, most of the flaws can be countered by the price. There’s little else in the market that offers the sort of size, technology and attractive design for just over $30,000.
The closest rival would be the MG ZST, which can be had in top-spec Essence trim for $33,990 and offers many of the same features as the Jolion. You could also consider the Kia Seltos, though $31,990 puts you in the base LX model.