It’s a bit like The Naked Gun. That’s a film where, when I sat down in my seat, my expectations were rock bottom. I’d adored the little-seen original Police Squad! television series, and found the later trilogy of films, starring Leslie Nielsen as hapless police lieutenant Frank Drebin, fitfully amusing.
How could gritty, dour Liam Neeson recapture Nielsen’s glorious deadpan? Hadn’t all the good jokes been done already in the TV show? Well, it turns out I needn’t have worried – Neeson, Pamela Anderson and director Akiva Schaffer delivered a solid 85 minutes of cop comedy with the windscreen gag one of the funniest things I’ve seen on screen in ages.
No, Donald Clarke has not taken over the motors column; the above is an example of how going in with flatlining expectations can sometimes produce a pleasant surprise.
Which is exactly what has happened with the Leapmotor T03. Leapmotor, as you may have read on these pages some months ago, is the latest Chinese car brand to arrive in the Irish market, promising big spec, big tech and small prices.
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Leapmotor is unusual, though, in that it’s part-owned by the European-based Stellantis Group, holder of the keys to Peugeot, Citroen, Fiat, Alfa Romeo, Jeep, Opel, etc. So in Ireland, the new brand is being handled by Gowan Auto, which looks after all of Stellantis’s brands here.
So far, so conventional, but also so concerning. I’d heard nothing but bad things about the little T03 electric city car. I know, one shouldn’t allow other opinions to sway one’s own, but it’s impossible sometimes not to pick up the vibe, and the vibe surrounding the T03 was cheap and nasty.
The styling of the diminutive city car doesn’t help its case much. It looks like an old Smart ForTwo that’s been passed through a Fiat Instagram filter and come out with some very less than impressive panel gaps. It’s not offensive, but neither is it pretty, nor is it as cute as it thinks itself to be.
However, slip inside and things start to pick up. There’s plenty of cheap plastics, but they’re not obdurately dreary, and the way things are put together seems decent.
There’s also copious equipment, including a surprisingly decent touchscreen and digital instrument combo, air conditioning and even a panoramic sunroof, all for a price that hasn’t been announced yet but which we’re told will be significantly less than €20,000. In the UK, the T03 is about €1,200 cheaper than a Dacia Spring, so show your workings from that point.
Underneath, it comes only with a 37kWh battery – no basic cheap-o small battery version – and a 95hp electric motor driving the front wheels. Total range is an entirely useful 265km.
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The driving position is a bit bolt-upright, but it’s fine given that no one is likely to use the T03 for a long cross-continent journey. The back seats are tight, but not bad by the standards of the small city car class, and certainly roomier than those of the Dacia Spring.
The boot holds only 210 litres of stuff, and the back seats don’t split-fold; they fold as one contiguous unit, which feels incredibly old-fashioned, but it’s tolerably practical.
What’s really surprising is that it’s actually not at all bad to drive.
True, even in sport mode (should that one be reported to the Advertising Standards Authority?) you need to use every millimetre of the accelerator’s travel to get any progress at all, and the electric motor whines and drones incredibly loudly at low speeds.
However, tackling corners, the little T03 copes really rather well, and much better than the roly-poly Dacia manages. It’s not actually, technically fun, but it’s solid and decent and no-nonsense, and if you’re thinking of getting a small car that will cost utter buttons to run (assuming you can charge at home, and can ignore the dreadful, but still Spring-bettering, DC charging rate of 48kW. That 265km range seems pretty honest, too, certainly at intra-urban speeds.
What about Leapmotor’s more ambitious model, though? The C10 SUV comes in two flavours, one of which we haven’t tried, and one of which we have.
The one we haven’t is the fully electric, which, with its range of 420km, doesn’t seem all that impressive on paper, although buyers may well be swayed by the fact that it’s sized against really quite chunky SUV rivals but should cost a lot less, circa €40,000 to €45,000. That doesn’t look all that impressive, but you have to also incorporate the C10’s massive standard equipment count.
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On the outside, it looks rather like every other SUV you’ve ever seen. A bit of Smart. A touch of Porsche. A dash of Opel. It’s certainly not an ugly car, but rather like one of those bit-players in old episodes of Columbo, the ones who’d turn up playing a different character every week so you’d only vaguely recognise them.
Inside, it can go either way. You can either go for an incredibly plain effect where literally everything is finished in the same shade of black-grey, or you can go for a wild, bright orange trim that looks as if someone’s had an accident with a bottle of Cointreau. It’s... something.
Aside from the colour choice, the overall effect inside is as generic as the exterior, with the expected big touchscreen and digital instruments. Leapmotor has also clearly been shopping with the same component supplier as Chinese rival Xpeng, as the column stalks are identical, but aside from a slightly rubbery texture for the ‘leather’ seats, quality levels are really very good, and so too are comfort levels. There are acres of space front and rear, but no seven-seat option and the 435-litre boot is disappointingly small.
Oddly, the C10 doesn’t drive as well as the little T03. Its steering is far lighter and less talkative, so you have to feel your way around corners, and there’s plenty of body roll too. It’s not exactly badly mannered, but if you’re looking for fun or precision, look elsewhere.
However, what might spark Irish buyers’ attention is the range-extender drivetrain. This REEV (Range Extender Electric Vehicle) uses a relatively compact 28kWh battery pack for a claimed range, on a full charge, of 145km.
That’s then supplemented by a 1.5-litre petrol engine which, like that of a Nissan Qashqai e-Power, never drives the wheels, but just tops up the battery which powers the 216hp electric motor. Combined, Leapmotor claims an electric and petrol range of 975km, and on our brief test drive, we were seeing indicated ranges of 133km on electric power, and 800km combined, which isn’t too shabby, especially not at a claimed 10g/km of CO2 emissions.
Leapmotor wants to take on the likes of the Renault Scenic, Skoda Kodiaq and VW Tiguan with this C10, which might seem a bit ambitious. Certainly, the big SUV needs to be sharper to drive to chime better with European tastes, but on this first amuse bouche of Leapmotor’s products, this seems to be yet another deadly-serious Chinese company for European brands to tackle. It’s just that this one is also partly European.
