Jaecoo 7 SHS - long-term review

The Jaecoo 7 has made a jaeconfident start to its life of Top Gear Garage service. Cabin quality (sorry, jaecabin jaequality) is top drawer for its price bracket, while economy (jaeconomy?) from the hybrid set-up is proving equally impressive. Despite not adding any extra electric juice to the 7’s regular petrol diet, I’ve been regularly returning over 50mpg, which I reckon is pretty tidy from a bluff, weighty SUV.

There are, however, a few Jaecoo jaequirks I’m still struggling to wrap my head around…

THERE’S NO START BUTTON

Nor an ignition barrel. To start the 7, you simply get in and flick the column-mounted gearshifter into D or R. At the end of your journey, tap it back into P and get out.

We’ve seen this on plenty of full EVs, but it’s the first time I’ve encountered it on something with a combustion engine. It’s a genuinely strange sensation to leave the 7 with petrol motor still running, and trust it’ll shut itself down when you lock it from the key fob.

ADJUSTING THE WING MIRRORS IS A PAIN (THOUGH LESS OF A PAIN THAN IT WAS)

There are no physical switches to adjust the 7’s wing mirrors. Instead, you must navigate to a relevant page from the central touchscreen, at which point the two touchpads on the steering wheel assume control of the mirror angles.

This page is tough to locate, buried deep within one of the Jaecoo’s submenus. If you need to adjust your mirrors quickly, this is inconvenient.

However! I recently discovered you can programme the steering wheel’s ‘star’ button to act as a shortcut to the mirror menu: just press and hold it to assign it a new function. This is handy. Though not as handy as actual buttons.

THE WINDOW SWITCHES ARE BACK-TO-FRONT

Thankfully the 7’s window switches are physical controls rather than touchscreen doodahs, located exactly where you’d expected to find them. However they are – to my mind at least –wired up the wrong way round. Tilt towards you to close, tilt away to open. That’s backwards, right?

I guess, if your switches are mounted horizontally rather than on an angle, there’s no logical reason why pull should equal down, and push should equal up. But it does. Turn ‘em round, Jaecoo.

IT WON’T MOVE UNLESS YOU’RE BELTED IN

Though the Jaecoo will allow you to engage a gear if the driver’s seatbelt isn’t done up, it won’t allow you to actually move off, refusing to release the handbrake. This leads to an awkward episode of gearbox-versus-handbrake mechanical straining, one I somehow manage to provoke, on average, at least three times a day during parking manoeuvres.

IT GETS FREAKED OUT BY ITS OWN ROOF BLIND

The 7 has a lovely full-length panoramic sunroof, standard on this Deluxe trim. This sunroof has a retractable blind. If this blind is open when you depart the car and lock it, the 7 will auto-shut the blind, presumably to keep the cabin a little cooler. Unfortunately the car’s motion sensor detects this movement of the blind, believes it to be an intruder, and sets off the alarm. Yep.

The only solution is remembering to close the blind before you leave the car. Jaecoo says there’s a fix on the way for this soon, presumably involving telling the 7 to stop being scared of its own shadow.