Striking looks, a hefty technology inclusion, a sharp sticker …  if you can abide the annoyances, there’s a fair swag of car for the money.

Price: $34,990.

Drivetrain: 1.5-litre four-cylinder petrol 108kW/210Nm, constantly variable transmission.

How big: 4400mm long; 1830mm wide; 1588mm long.

We like: A sizeable car for the spend; very strong warranty.

Not so much: Insufferable driver assistance; driver’s seat set too high for tall; so-so suspension tune; poor CVT. 

MAKING a big noise is important to new entrant car brands - for Omoda that ideal plays out with considerable passion.

Welcome sounds that kick in at start up are a fixture of modern cars. Not for the Omoda 5 the usual two-second electronic diddy-bop. 

Slip behind the wheel of this car are you’ll be treated to a grand fanfare; an incredibly intense and prolonged orchestral soundscape of such stridency and gravitas you half expect Simon Dallow to launch into a dramatic breaking news announcement as it tails off.

Why? Well, the name that uses O for Oxygen and Moda as a representation of modern fashion says it all. Because it’s a name that says nothing to most Kiwis.

China has several hundred car makes and most are unknown outside its borders, but there’s a twist here. 

Omoda and incoming Jaecoo are absolutely fresh options for us, and the first is a newborn creations in a global sense, too - it didn’t exist before 2022. 

But the make that begat both is better known to us, though perhaps for not the best reasons. Chery tried and failed to make it here 10 years ago, including with what was then our cheapest new car. The experience sadly soured, to point it pulled out. 

Now Chery is ripe for return, but behind these other brand names. NZ isn’t among places where Omoda and Jaecoo are promoted as Chery brands, yet it’s not entirely absent. The Chery logo is a home screen prompt on the Apple CarPlay menu and saying the name seems to be trigger words for the voice control.

Omoda aims to have up to eight crossovers in circulation by 2025 Jaecoo - which is the make with a more off-road aptitude - will have some sports utilities as well.

Everything starts with car on test. The Omoda 5 is a family sports utility model simultaneously developed in left- and right-hand drive, it’s a car with global aspiration that like so many cars from the People’s Republic strives to rewrite category expectations. It gets a brand-new platform, fresh engines and a sophisticated technology package; plus the usual low-ball pricing nd a strong warranty.

In this instance, while it was benchmarked against the Mazda CX-30, Hyundai Kona and Toyota C-HR among others, it is priced to compete with the smaller Kia Seltos, Toyota Yaris Cross, Mazda CX-3 and CX-30 even though, in size and specification, it’s almost as large as a Mazda CX-5, Toyota RAV4 and Nissan Qashqai.

There are three levels of 5. The cost leader front-drive C5 petrol, with a 108kW/210Nm 1.5-litre turbocharged petrol paired with a continuously variable transmission is on test here, in the higher of two available specifications. Above this sites another petrol, the GT, with a 147kW/290Nm 1.6-litre turbo petrol married to a seven-speed automatic, with all-wheel-drive as an option to the otherwise standard front-drive. Above those is a fully electric, also front drive.

The size advantage against others in the mid-$30k sphere shows most strongly where it stands to achieve appreciation. Cabin space given over to occupants is truly decent. It’ll sit four adults easily. 

How does it do it? Lift up the tailgate and you’ll see how. Even if you and a significant other were to head away for a weekend, it’ll be necessary to pack light. The 380-litre boot is not so tight as to lose practicality, but it’s smaller than the class average, and limited by the steeply raked rear screen. Removing the boot floor that covers the space-saver spare wheel would release significantly more capacity, as under the carpet is a very thick and hefty polystyrene slab. 

A hefty loading of features never goes amiss when you’re new to the competition and, in that respect, the C5 also registers well. 

As much as the 230T here (the designation, by ty the way, corresponds to the car’s torque output … but not here, as NZ tuning is different) has the bottom tier engine, it’s not poverty packaged by any means.

Adaptive cruise control, a heated steering wheel, a 360-degree camera system, an electric sunroof, Qi wireless phone charging - with a cooling function to keep your phone from overheating - and an ambient lighting pack arrive. It has voice control. The instrument panel is fully digital and when it come to life, there are three themes to choose from. The seats are covered in a leatherette but are heated. Apple CarPlay and Android Auto are standard and a 17-function advanced driving system package with lane keeping assist and autonomous emergency braking are also delivered.

That’s going to grab your attention, but obviously what first turns heads is the styling.

Designers will often argue merit of a car looking like nothing you’ve ever seen before when it’s from an upstart branding and represents as a fully fresh arrival on the scene. Chery’s design team has kinda done this, though there’s a bit of cribbing details from other cars.  

The best way to differentiate the petrol and electric versions is to go by the frontal styling; the latter’s is very sleek, almost Euro-chic and the petrol’s … isn’t.

Give a car a massive grille and inevitably, it courts attention and causes controversy. Having been to China, I can attest over there a look like this is a celebrated status thing and not at all extraordinary. Then again, over there, neither is fried chicken with vanilla ice cream (it works … kinda). Different tastes, right? Distinctive as the C5’s face is, my own view is adoption of the E5 electric’s look come facelift might make it an easier sell.

The rear three-quarter is perhaps the best angle; the floating roofline, scalloped panels, with some exterior accents in red (which looks great, though you wonder about long-term UV degradation) and the smart-looking alloys suggest Omoda’s styling team has taken remit to draw attention to younger buyers, who tend to more style-conscious, very much to heart. 

Chery seems to have learned more about building cars in the decade since it departed. The Omoda 5 isn’t an absolute byword for quality, but everything feels quite robust, and for this price, the materials used in the cabin are above average, with largesse extending to soft-touch plastics and piano-black infotainment system bezels, while paint and panel fit quality also looked pretty good. That the protective plastic cap on the rear window wiper arm had departed, and clearly some time ago (going by the look of the exposed metal parts) was noted, all the same.

It was acknowledged the vehicle sent out to test was an early build evaluation example that might have lacked every update meted those you can now buy. 

As reported on April 12, C5s here benefit from a suspension retune, undertaken in Australia, to settle the handling and ride and also achieve an ADAS update, to address criticism of the lane keep and steering assist on early cars being over-reactive.

Understanding about the test example having retained original suspension tune but having been meted electronic updates didn’t inhibit tech glitches.

The NZ-spec delivers wireless CarPlay integration, but this car wouldn’t do that. It instead relied on cable hook-up, via USB-C port, which was a bit of a faff, as it’s not awkwardly sited, hidden under the centre console in a location configured for left hand drive.

LCD screens for the infotainment system and the instrument cluster are a big statement of technology leadership intent at this price point. 

The C5’s displays are outwardly really impressive; with sharp resolution and swift reactivity. While the layouts are a bit tricky to get your head around, it delivers a lot of promise.

The flaw with this particular car, though, was occasional propensity for the infotainment side to suddenly close down then laboriously reboot during driving. 

We began to joke it was train-phobic because it seemed to happen when encountering railway crossings - we’ve a few around where I live. More probably, the issue might have been a loose connection somewhere being affected by the suspension jolt.

The car’s electronic interaction with the key holder also rated interest. Chery has gone for extravagance here; for example, just walking up to the car with the key in your pocket will see the lights play out a sequence while it would also lock itself super-quick whenever the driver exited. Too fast, as it turns out. Having momentarily remained in the passenger seat to conclude a text before egressing, my wife found she had to manually unlock her door. It allowed this … but she’d barely got a foot on the ground when the very, very loud alarm triggered.

It has more safety tech than many rivals at this spend but not all of it works as you’d want.

If the ADAS had been reworked, on evidence from this drive it very much requires more attention. I’m all for cars having the smarts to look out for you, but this example was too often trying too hard. 

It had the speed sign alert down pat, but driver attention monitoring is incessant - you feel a prolonged blink will trigger it - the active cruise control had frequent tendency to alert to phantom vehicles and electronic imagination so affected the lane keep assist, to point of it becoming an infuriation. Beyond the beeping and bonging, the big irritant was the over-sensitive emergency steering response that was so keen on involving it sometimes enacted when the car was nowhere near obvious markings. 

These systems are required to achieve a top safety score - and Omoda C5 has one of those, with an ANCAP five - but the uneven tolerances and plain flakiness here remind how challenging it is to accurately align their functionality with the actual limit on any road, not least those on which markings are less than textbook. When they don’t work quite well enough, they just become irritating, which is self-defeating.

Again, this might have been accentuated on this particular car. On the NZ market product, there’s a bypass, though it has to be reset every time you switch the car on, but the test example didn’t seem to have it.You can forgive a lot when the price difference is noticeable. 

The good side is that, while all this irked, there’s logically nothing that cannot be sorted. 

The toughest challenge, in reality, might be to remedy the driving position for taller drivers.  The long-armed will appreciate that the steering column telescopes but, at present, even at lowest position, the chair was a touch too high for my 1.8 metre height. Allowing some tilt adjustment would help.

The seats themselves are a little flat and lacking in support but, really, a a bargain buy, it gives more than you might expect to get. Cabin storage is thoughtful, for instance. The central bin is really commodious and has an openable vent connected to the air con, great for keeping drinks chilly. 

There are a couple of head scratchers? Like, what’s the reason why you can also pop out the bottom of one cup holder? And, also why give it a Tesla-style (actually, ‘copy' is a better word) twin wireless charging pad when only one side actually inductively charges your smartphone?

In respect to wider aspects of driving, at this level, it’s a journeyman effort. 

The powertrain is adequate, but that’s all it could be, given the modest outputs cited. This 1.5-litre has economy and sport settings but the latter seems to make no tangible difference. It is simply not a particularly powerful engine, to point where the lack of obvious oomph is such that you wonder how well it would cope with a full load of passengers, but if you are running the car as a empty nester, it’ll be fine. 

The CVT automatic has nine stepped ratios and is fairly okay around town, but hit the throttle - which has a bit of a weird calibration - and you’ll find it sends the revs soaring for the stratosphere. As acceleration is not all that brisk anyway (it clocks 0-100kmh in 9.9 seconds officially), you’re better taking everything gently, letting momentum build up, rather than going for anything more energetic.

Suspension is a simple set-up of struts at the front and a torsion beam out back. The handling tune suggests ambition is to deliver an easy-going ambience, with soft and springy suspension and not a great deal of feedback from the steering or even the brakes.

It’s a relaxing car at a cruise, with only a little wind and road noise penetrating the cabin, but the springs are quite compliant, so while speed bumps are despatched with a gentle heave and settle, it’s also prone to lean in corners and you don’t have to try hard to make the 215/55R18 GitiComfort F50 tyres protest.

It’s not bad enough to be awful, but not good enough to wonderful, either. There’s every reason to think the team in Australia will be kept busy.

The summary at this level is pretty clear-cut. On strength of this test, the finer details lack polish and the driver assist systems demand further finessing. It’s on that matter that there’s sense it may have been slightly rushed to market. 

To be fair, in that regard, it’s hardly isolated. Product development timelines from China’s car brands are famously short. The old saying about ‘less haste’ seems to have no meaning there. The issues here likely reflect the risk of that attitude.

Yet while it’s not a knock-out blow, it is clearly positioned as a market disruptor. Whichever side you take in respect to the design, you can’t deny that Omoda has been bold and yet not so unconventional as to put itself into a niche. 

You it also reminds that, as much as cheap electric cars from China tend to win all the headlines, it’s the inexpensive petrol ones from there that really have the potential to send the market tipsy, at least until the price of fuel is upset.

As much as the Omoda C5 in this format isn’t much to write home about for how it drives, it does deliver very solidly for stuff that very probably will matter more to buyers who set a low-spend target and aim to get the most for that limited money. 

It’s not going to be expensive to run and you get very generous standard equipment, good passenger room and a competitive sticker with an impressive unlimited kilometre seven-year warranty with roadside assistance to help build confidence.