By Kelly Fisher
There’s a version of me that has very strong opinions about Chinese car brands. I earned them honestly by spending real time in these cars back when the interiors smelled faintly of superglue, when the plastics had that particular hollow clunk, when you genuinely wondered whether the door handle would still be attached by the time you reached your destination. I know where this category came from. Which is exactly why the whole new slew of Chinese vehicles has impressed me – the Changan CS75 included.
Here’s what you need to know first: Changan isn’t new to South Africa. The brand was here before, quietly, and then it wasn’t, and now it’s back, with a local distributor, a network, and the kind of interior that makes you do a small double-take the first time you sit in it. This isn’t the budget play from last time.
The CS75 is a mid-size SUV with a 1.5-litre turbocharged four-cylinder producing 138 kW and 300 Nm, paired to a seven-speed dual-clutch transmission. On paper it’s a perfectly reasonable set of numbers. In real life, around Cape Town, it’s more than enough. It pulls without drama, the gearbox doesn’t hunt, and the whole thing is remarkably quiet for something in this price bracket.
The inside is where Changan is clearly making its argument. The panoramic sunroof is enormous. The 12.3-inch infotainment screen is large and responsive. The seats are leather, and the stitching is neat. It also has a 360-degree camera that is genuinely useful and not, as is sometimes the case, a grainy afterthought.
The downsides are real but not deal-breaking. The dual-clutch can be slightly hesitant at very low speeds. Some of the secondary switchgear has a plasticky clunk that doesn’t quite match the aspirational vibe of the rest. And Changan is still rebuilding trust here. That takes time that can’t be fixed with a spec sheet, no matter how good the spec sheet is.
But if you’re shopping in the R500 000-to-R600 000 SUV space and you’re willing to give another Chinese brand a try, the Changan CS75 deserves consideration. It’s genuinely good. And not in a way that’s good-for-a-Chinese-brand. Just good.
I know what these cars used to be. This isn’t that.