So I took my car back to Haval Paarl on Tuesday so they could sort out the windscreen thing and they wanted to go over it for a chip and paint repair that was never done in the first place and while busy with that they were actually so annoyed with the smash & grab on the Driver's side window that they actually got that redone. It honestly didn't bother me at all, but the salesperson takes serious pride in looking after his customers and was not happy with it.
Anyway that's besides the point they gave me a virtually brand new Jolion Pro 1.5T S Ultra Luxury, and I'm not a 100% sure if was the faster higher powered S but it certainly didn't feel like only 105kW of the normal one.
It could have been a review on it's own but I feel that would be unfair as I didn't drive it that much over the past few days but also because I came into it 100% comparing it to the H6 every step of the way rather than to it's peers and so I feel it belongs in this thread more as a "Why you should buy a second hand H6, instead of a Jolion" kind of conversation.
Jolion Pro 1.5T S Ultra Luxury
Body
So at face value in my head it was just a smaller version of the H6, but fundamentally driving it the car doesn't feel SUV like at all. You don't get up into it like the H6 and your legs are mostly in front of you rather than folding in below you.
The Jolion is only 20cm shorter but is 10cm lower which I'm sure most of which is actually at ground clearance level and that makes it feel quite different. It feels much more sporty and less SUV like but also has an element of too small toy car because of it.
The one I got was the very same white with blacked out colour scheme as my car, but the change to blacked out door handles as well and a lot of matt black plastic body trim sections just gives it a much cheaper feeling overall. Oddly it doesn't have the black wheels but rather a dark silver setup which is possibly what contributes to this somewhat.
Interior
Getting in it reeked of new car which is always nice and first impressions are that the seats and general cabin are obviously much the same, until you notice the interface on both the entertainment unit and the driver cluster is entirely different.
There is generally a targeted marketing difference here and this car is definitely aimed at the younger generation, with the entertainment unit being much more of a "Smart Phone" feeling and I guess I'm getting that old but actually found it quite hard to navigate. Everything is smaller and more compressed, but there was also a much stronger Chinese element to entire way it looks and how the toggle button even though there are toggles describes their current state with a word I don't quite remember now but we'd never use in the English world to describe it. I want to say every toggle said "Locked/Unlocked" next to it which makes little sense.
The driver cluster is a lot more sparse and annoyingly instead of being just the LCD screen right up against the wheel this is an LCD screen inside a plastic encased and angled unit, which feels like it's shared with a cheaper model and they just pop the screen in there rather than analog dials. You only really notice this because when you have the sun shining on it later then it becomes quite hard to read at times. Again though it's aimed at the youthful market with changing themes for different drive modes..which funnily enough in this car seems to save when you turn it off unlike the annoyance of mine always jumping back to normal.
The doors have RGB light wave patterns things that pulse every so often and while I wouldn't not buy the car because of that it's definitely a non-feature that I hope one can turn off because I would happily go without. In contrast the H6 has a very tasteful always on light pattern that shines down onto the centre console from the top of the glove box area and that is the only fancy lighting you ever see and then only at night.
Otherwise the part of the interior I like over the H6 is that everything is fake carbon fibre and normally this would sound like a bad thing but considering it's matte and seems quite hardy this means it won't scratch easily and will likely still be the same in 10 years time, whereas the Piano Black glossy finish stuff in my H6 is already scuffed from day to day use and will simply get worse over time.
But the centre console is the weirdest waste of space I've seen in a while. There are these three "slots" all different sizes and I honestly don't know what you are meant to do with them. The one is just barely wide enough for the key to go in there but then is still 25cm long and I don't know what else can go in there. Then the next one is just wide enough to hold my phone...sideways and upright but why would I want to do this when the wireless charger pad is right behind it? And then the third one is tiny and I have no clue what the point is.
The two cupholders behind this are also two different sizes, which would mean two people sitting in front can't both have something in there as it won't fit two different size bottles and the whole thing is just a bit odd and seem so strange over the H6 with loads of space to put stuff down.
It has a similar "double shelf" vibe but has much less space which is maybe not a bad thing and then the centre cubby hole is also a bit smaller.
Better than the H6 it has all it's USB stuff on the driver side.
The materials on the dash and doors is very soft touch but I actually wonder if it's too soft touch and how it will last over time.
