Geely packs quality with a little added fun in Emgrand
Chinese auto major stands out from the rest of the pack with its high-riding family car
In Europe in the 1980s, hot hatches were all the rage. There was the Ford Escort XR3i, VW Golf GTI and the tiny Peugeot 209 GTI. These pocket rockets offered enough performance to rattle a supercar at the traffic lights while based on an otherwise mundane small family hatchback.
China, of course, missed out on all the fun, and until recently performance models were strictly import only. Geely had a go at producing a sports car with the Beauty Leopard, in 2003, but didn’t have an engine to match the looks. Brilliance had a more coherent attempt with its Coupe, but it was ahead of its time. It wasn’t until Volkswagen started producing the Golf GTI locally that they started to gain more acceptance.
Chinese brands today usually offer small displacement turbo engines in their models, but none are all-out sports models. As such, on the face of it, the Geely Emgrand GS and GL are typical. Essentially they are non-identical twins. The GS, which was launched first, is a crossover; the GL is the production version of the Emgrand concept saloon shown at the 2015 Shanghai Auto Show. Following on from the GC9 and Boyue, they are products of Geely’s reinvigorated design studios, headed up by former Volvo design chief Peter Horbury.
Unfortunately, the GC9’s good looks have not been carried over to the GL. The resultant car, while far from ugly, is generic and could have greatly benefited from the muscular haunches of the GC9. Luckily the GS suffers from no such problems, and is youthful plus reasonably distinctive.
As we have come to expect from Geely, build quality both inside and out is on a par with international standards. Internally the GS and GL are near identical. While the materials are not as good as the GC9 or Boyue, this can be expected given the cars cheaper price points. There is an attempt at a more premium feel, with a brushed aluminium look on the dash and leather inserts in the doors on the top of the range’s Aesthetic trim GS. Cut-outs at the base of the dash give the impression that it floats into the centre tunnel, making for a distinctive feature.
