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00:00G'day, I'm Paul. So, I've got to admit, sometimes I'll hop into a car and drive it around a bit before I actually sit
00:05down and have a look at the notes and pricing and all that sort of stuff, and I was a bit surprised when I saw
00:10how much that costs. It is the Haval Jolion, Joline, Jolion, I don't exactly know how to pronounce it,
00:15but a lot of you have been asking us to review it, so that's what we're doing today. This one right here is the top
00:20specification Ultra version. It's priced at just over $30,000 drive away.
00:26The reason that surprised me is because the interior looks pretty good, the exterior looks nice. Now, if that's a little bit too
00:31expensive, the entry-level is priced at just over $25,000 drive away. This competes with things like the Hyundai Kona, the
00:38Honda HR-V and the Kia Seltos. Today, we're going to do a detailed review of this car. If you do want to skip ahead to
00:44other parts of the review, you can use the time codes up on the screen there, or if you're on YouTube, scroll down and use
00:49the chapters below, and if you haven't done so already, subscribe to our channel and press the bell icon so I can listen to
00:54more of your ideas, and you can find out every single time we publish a review you've been asking for.
01:00Let's talk styling. So you've got six external colours to pick from. All but white is an additional $495. What do you
01:06reckon about the design? Let me know in the comments section. I think it's pretty striking. It doesn't look generic and, I
01:12don't know, I don't want this to sound offensive, but it doesn't really look like a Chinese car. It looks like a mainstream
01:16European or Japanese vehicle. So you've got this sort of brushed chrome look up the front there, the Haval badge, you have a
01:22camera there for the 360 camera, you have another plate that's on, a little bit wonky, black garnish down the bottom, and
01:29then you've got these headlights, full LED headlights with LED daytime running lights. These actually give you a decent
01:34amount of vision at night time. It's a good setup. LED vision on the side there, just in case you've forgotten. Over on the
01:39side here, you have a set of 18-inch alloy wheels, so it's got that sort of shadow chrome look on the outside with piano
01:46black on the inside. Decent looking alloy wheel and good profile on the rubber as well, which means this should ride
01:52nicely when we go out for a drive later on. You've got an indicator built into that wing mirror with a camera for the 360
01:58camera. You've got chrome strips along the side of the car and down the bottom as well. Roof rails, privacy glass here on the
02:04top spec, and then come around to the back. Around the rear you have more LED and another reminder that it is LED. Haval, big
02:12letters across the rear there, Jolion over to the side, and GWM, which stands for Great Wall Motors. So yeah, keen to get your
02:18feedback. Let me know what you think about the design. Is it a good looking car and would you buy one? Okay, we are inside the
02:25Jolion. Let's start off with the key. Here it is. So you have the panic button, lock, boot, unlock, and then on the back you have
02:34Haval. It's a proximity sensing key, so you just leave that in your pocket. Once you're inside, you've got a stop start button
02:39down here. Tell you what, I was pretty surprised when I first sat in this. $30,000, you get a pretty schmick looking interior.
02:47You get this giant infotainment screen, this nice sort of material finish along the top there with what looks like real stitching. It
02:53really does feel like a premium offering and it certainly feels a whole lot more premium than the rest of the cars in this segment. So a
02:59big tick there and I think it's nicely presented as well with minimal use of piano black, thank goodness. In terms of the materials,
03:06they're sort of rubberised along the top there. You've got that soft stuff that I just mentioned. Then they get a little firmer and
03:11scratchier as you move down the cabin, but for the most part it looks pretty good. In terms of your touch points, not too bad
03:17in the centre there. Really nice and soft on the door. How soft are they? Well, we've got our durometer, we've tested the main
03:22surfaces in this cabin. If you want to see how this car compares to others that we've tested before, have a look at the link in the
03:28description. Now, what about build quality? This stuff's sort of fairly loose in the centre there, but the rest of it feels okay.
03:38Have you owned a Haval before, a GWM of some sort? Let me know if it has been reliable and built properly in the comment
03:46section below. Let's talk infotainment. I guess this is the centrepiece of the interior. It is a Whopper 12.3-inch infotainment
03:54system. Actually, it looks pretty decent as well. It looks like a high-resolution screen, so a big tick there. In terms of radio, you
04:00have AM and FM radio. There's no digital, which I find strange. A lot of the time we review these Chinese cars and they don't have any
04:09digital radio, so it is really odd that they don't fit that as standard, but you do have smartphone mirroring in the form of Apple
04:16CarPlay and Android Auto. I'll show you what Android Auto looks like. Both of those require a cable, by the way. Look at that, it is a
04:23full-screen integration and it is nice and sharp, very quick as well, so quite an impressive setup there. And this is what Apple CarPlay
04:31looks like. Look at that, another full-screen integration. That's all nice and quick as well. This is a really impressive setup. I
04:37haven't seen any other cars that have such an impressive visual presence inside the cabin, especially when it comes to
04:44smartphone mirroring, so I like that they've gone to that little bit of extra effort to, I don't know, make this feel like a tech-savvy
04:50car. And by the way, there's a six-speaker sound system. How good is it? It's so-so. It's not the world's best sound system and it's not
04:57the worst. It kind of just does what it says on the box, so keep that in mind if you are buying it. Now, moving on to the screen ahead of
05:03the driver, you have a digital instrument cluster there as well, so no analogue gauges. It's a nice-looking setup. It can be a little bit
05:09confusing because there's a fair bit going on there, but you can transition between the screens and go to different sort of displays in
05:16the centre there, and that also shows you your safety systems as well. There is a lot of them. They beep a lot at you as well, so
05:23thankfully you can change a lot of those settings here to remove some of the beeps that are constantly hounding you, but yeah, it can be a
05:30little overwhelming at times. Moving on to safety, you have autonomous emergency braking with pedestrian and cyclist detection. You
05:36have an auto-dibbing rear vision mirror. You have a lane departure warning and a lane keeping assistant. You have radar cruise
05:43control. You also have a blind spot monitor built into the wing mirror just there. This thing over here, it's a driver attention alert,
05:50so it'll be able to detect if you're feeling drowsy or, you know, you're not concentrating, and it'll give you a warning, so pretty
05:56clever setup just there. Now, in terms of parking, you have front and rear parking sensors and a 360 camera. I'll show you what that
06:04looks like. This is a pretty cool setup, so decent resolution on that. I can clearly make out what's going on around the car. You
06:11have a top-down view. What you can also do is go straight to that view if you need to, but you can also select different angles, so you
06:19get kind of a 3D view of the car there. Pretty impressive in this price bracket, if you ask me. So, practicality, and we'll start with
06:26connectivity. Down here, you've got two USB ports. You've got a 12-volt outlet. You have a wireless phone charger, so you can just
06:33plug your phone onto there, or alternatively, your phone can sit in a number of other places. There's all these sort of random
06:38little storage nooks for things and pens and stuff. You've got two cup holders under here. Let's have a look at how it goes with our
06:44coffee cup. Look at that. There's actually a specific design for our tiny little coffee cup just there, so that's pretty impressive,
06:52and then you have a bigger one off to the side with rubber teeth. That means you can fit your water bottle into the bigger one
06:58without any dramas. Your bottle also fits inside the door. Let's see if we can fit our large water bottle as well. There you go.
07:05That fits too, so a pretty decent amount of storage. Then you have a deep centre console. You have a glove box there that's
07:13reasonably sized. More storage down the bottom here, and finally, a sunglasses holder. OK, what about comfort? You'll notice
07:21here there's no sort of climate controls. You have to do them all on the screen, which is OK, but it can be a little bit
07:27annoying because, you know, accessing it, you've got to find this spot, then you come to this screen, and then you're going to go
07:34up and down and do all that sort of stuff. A little bit clumsy while you're driving, so not the best layout in the world, but this is
07:39where you'll find your dual-zone automatic climate control. Now, headed seats. There are headed seats for the front row as well,
07:46but as far as I can tell, the only way to activate them is to go through the menus to seating and then switching it on through
07:55there. There's no sort of shortcut buttons anywhere else, and it's not in the climate menu either, so a strange setup if you ask me.
08:02Now, what about the seats themselves? The design is interesting because you've got Havel imprinted on them. You've got this
08:06cool sort of cut-out section. They are quite comfortable, so they hug you in nicely. They have electric adjustment, so you can go
08:13forwards and backwards. The back can go forwards and backwards, and then you can also lift the base of the seat. I do find, though,
08:19that I can't really find a comfortable position. I'd love to be able to lift the front of the base, but that doesn't work, and the
08:27same follows through the steering wheel where you only have tilt adjustment. There's no reach adjustment, which I think is
08:33absolutely crazy because the steering wheel sits quite a way away from you. Now, what about our reach test? All of that is pretty
08:40straightforward to reach while you're driving. Second row of the Jolyon, I've got loads of room here. Like, I've got my seat
08:48pretty far back and stacks of knee room. Lots of toe room and head room is pretty good as well. Got a nice looking panoramic
08:56sunroof there, which looks fantastic. You've got a centre armrest here with two cup holders. I'll show you how that works. So,
09:02you've got gripped tabs on there. I'll whack that out of the way, and then you can also put your bottle inside the door as well,
09:09should you please. You've got map pockets in the back of the seats, two USB outlets. You've got air vents and also a storage
09:16nook down the bottom. You also have ISOFIX points on the two outboard seats. Pretty nice place to be seated back here, and a
09:24lot of room, which is pretty surprising. What about your cargo space? Let's have a look. You have a little over 400 litres of
09:31cargo space available just here in standard form. Beneath the cargo floor, you have a space saver spare tyre, and then you
09:37have storage off to the sides. Can expand the space, so I'll show you how that works in a moment. Bag goes in without any
09:44dramas. Yeah, that'll fit in long ways, or you can just turn it if you want to. It's not a problem. I'll show you how to
09:54expand it, so we'll get rid of our cargo blind first. Lift that out of the way. Okay, so what you can do is drop the second row
10:02from here, and when you do that, the space expands to a little over 1,100 litres.
10:10We've hit the road in the Jolion. So, powering this is an interesting engine. So, one and a half litre, four cylinder
10:19turbocharged petrol engine makes 110 kilowatts of power and 220 newton metres of torque. Really not a great deal, but when
10:27you think about it, it actually doesn't weigh that much. It's around that 1,400 kilo mark, and that means that you don't
10:32need a huge, giant engine under the bonnet there, sort of powering everything, and that's all mated to a seven-speed
10:39dual-clutch transmission. Now, you know my feeling on dual-clutches. Let's just see what it's like here when we come to a
10:45stop and go from a standing start. I'll just give this a little... Yeah, look, it's not amazing. So, when you breathe on it,
10:56it slips a bit, and then it gives you that sort of full force. It's not really smooth.
11:03Yeah, look, it's not the most amazing dual-clutch in the world, but it's probably not going to drive
11:07you too mad. We do have a slight hill section that I'll get to a little later on, and we'll test it
11:11there in terms of reversing just to see what it's like, because that's normally where you can catch
11:15out these dual-clutches in terms of the way that they work. How punchy is it? Well, let's give it a
11:20little stab here. Yeah, it's not very punchy at all. Yeah, look, it's not going to win any
11:30performance awards, but I think it's okay for what it is. If you think of the demographic of this car,
11:34perhaps they're people that, you know, aren't too interested in cars, and I think if they want
11:38something more powerful, they'll probably go elsewhere. For the person that's buying this to
11:41drive in and around the city, it's probably going to fit the bill just fine. Now, what about fuel
11:44economy? So, Havell claims 8.1 litres per 100 kilometres on the combined cycle. We are currently
11:51averaging, let's have a quick look here, 9.3. So, near enough to that figure. We've been doing a
11:57little bit of highway driving as well, so it is a little bit lower than what it's likely to be in
12:01the long term, especially if you are driving in and around the city. Now, I mentioned earlier,
12:05we've got a little hill section here for me to test this dual-clutch gearbox. So, what I'm going
12:10to do is point it down the hill. We're going to simulate reversing up a hill just to see how this
12:16goes. It's actually really good. They can be quite jerky when they do this if they're not calibrated
12:27properly. So, yeah, pretty impressive there in terms of your low speed manoeuvres. It will be a
12:31little jerky as you go off the line, but if you need to reverse up a hill or drive up a hill from
12:35stationary, it's not going to drive you bonkers. Havell doesn't have an official 0-100 time for the
12:40Jolly on, but we've put it up against our stopwatch and this is how it went.
12:56Now, what about the ride? So, we've got our choppy section coming up here.
13:00The ride is actually pretty impressive. I was expecting it to be far worse than it is.
13:04It is on the softer side, so what you'll find is that on those continuous undulations and the
13:09choppier parts, it can kind of dive down and bounce up again, but if you're driving this in
13:14and around the city, things like cobblestones, potholes, speed humps, it handles them really
13:20nicely and it's surprising they've been able to engineer this so well. It feels like more of a
13:24premium SUV than just something they've cobbled together. Now, let's talk handling. We'll switch
13:29over to manual mode. Got a couple of corners coming up. We'll tip it into here. It's actually
13:35not terrible. It's not going to win any performance awards, but it kind of sits flat
13:39enough through corners. There's enough sort of confidence in the engine. It can get a little
13:45thrashy at that top end, but if you stay stuck into it, it kind of just does the job. It's
13:50surprising how much pace you can actually build up here. Everything is unsurprising as well,
13:54so it's never going to get to the point where mid-corner it's going to unsettle itself,
13:59and all of this is kind of pointless for an SUV. I think that if you were to find a mountain pass,
14:04though, you have confidence in knowing that it can be nice and fun to drive, especially as a
14:08front-wheel drive car. What's visibility like? Well, look out the front there. It's no drivers
14:12at all. Down the side, it's great. They're pretty big wing mirrors. You also have that blind spot
14:16monitor built into those as well. Visibility out the back, though, is really, really poor,
14:21and it's an incredibly narrow window, so when you look out the back, you can only just see through
14:26that parcel, and I think that really could be improved simply because it is quite tricky to
14:31see what's going on behind the car. I'm also not a fan of some of these, what I presume are Chinese
14:36characters coming up. If you're going to localise the car for the Australian market, go to the effort
14:40of removing that stuff because it can be a little bit confusing. You only know it's a stop sign
14:45because the stop sign's in front of you, but if it pops up and you don't know Mandarin, how are
14:48you actually meant to know what that is telling you? You're unlikely to be doing it, but just
14:52in case you do, you've got 1,500 kilograms of braked towing capacity. Now, what about road
14:57noise? It's not terrible. If you are on a country road with coarse chip surface like this one here,
15:02you do get a bit of tyre noise coming into the cabin, but for the most part, it is incredibly
15:06windy outside at the moment. We're not getting a huge amount of wind noise, and it's quiet enough
15:11in here. It's not going to send you deaf if you go for a long-distance drive. One thing that I am
15:15sort of noticing here that's a bit of a recurring thing is this steering wheel. It's just too far
15:19in for me. I feel uncomfortable in this seating position. I'd really like to bring it out a little
15:24bit more, so it is a shame that there is no reach adjustment on the steering.
15:30So, the Haval Jolion, what do we reckon? I'll tell you what, it surprised me. I didn't think
15:34it would be as nice as it is to drive. So, the engine lacks a little bit of punch, but the ride
15:39around town is great. There's plenty of features inside the cabin. There is heaps of room inside
15:43the cabin, and the price is incredibly sharp. So, look, don't expect a performance car because it
15:49definitely isn't that, but it is fairly efficient and punchy enough when you need it to be.
15:54There are some caveats though. There is no crash test just yet, and that concerns me a little bit.
15:59I generally don't like recommending cars that we don't have a crash test rating for,
16:03so I wouldn't buy this until it has been crash tested and until we know that it is
16:07quite a safe car. So, keep that in mind. Go test drive it, but hold off buying it until there is
16:12a crash test rating. Outside of that, it really does tick all the boxes, and I've got to be honest,
16:16the rest of the manufacturers need to be concerned because if they can produce a car like that for
16:22$30,000 drive away, I guess it shows you how much we're getting led down the garden path by some
16:26other manufacturers. So, keep that in mind. Now, let me know what you think in the comments
16:30section below. Have you bought one of these? What's it been like? What's the service been like?
16:34Is it all good? I'm really keen to get feedback from owners. If you did enjoy this video, make
16:39sure you share it with your mates and hit the like button as well, and if you haven't done so already,
16:43subscribe to our channel and press the bell icon. But until next time, take it easy.