Ssangyong Rexton review

The Rexton’s cabin is fit for purpose. The materials aren’t impressive, but it’s a solid and appropriately hard-wearing place to be. There’s masses of adjustment in the front seats and the steering wheel, and you look out onto a dashboard that’s festooned with toys, and is logically laid out. Even the base model has an 8in touchscreen, while the ELX and Ultimate squeeze in a 9.2in display with TomTom sat-nav that’s superior to more than a few Japanese or French OEM nav systems. The screen itself is snappy to respond, the menus are reasonably well laid out… it’s not exactly Apple-spec, but it’s probably better than you’d imagine. And certainly, it’s an improvement over the system in the Tivoli crossover.

Right, we can stave this off no longer: let’s concentrate on the toys. And for that, we’ll focus on the ELX model, which is the Rexton you should buy. It’s £32,000 exactly, and on board you will find: seven seats, three-zone climate control, a heated steering wheel, tinted glass, nappa leather, heated and electric front seats, keyless entry and go plus nine airbags. It also graduates to useful speed-sensitive steering, and scores 18in wheels. This builds on the base model’s auto lights and wipers, frontal collision warming and autonomous emergency braking, traffic sign recognition and front and rear parking sensors. 

The top-spec Ultimate adds another £5,500 to the Rexton’s price, and adds rather tasteless faux-quilted leather, 20in alloys, mood lighting, an around-view camera, blind spot and lane change assist, ventilated seats and an electric tailgate.

Flip the reasonably sizeable rearmost seats down and you get one heck of a big boot. It’s an 827-litre cavern, enlarging to 1,977 litres in full lorry mode. Again, it’s tricky to find anything for the money that’s as commodious as the SsangYong.