Chery Tiggo 4 Pro 2024 review

Just when you thought the Chinese brands had truly captured the bottom end of the Aussie car market with their unbeatable pricing, along comes Chery with its new Tiggo 4 Pro small SUV and completely smashes everyone’s concept of bargain-basement value for money in 2024.

In an era when a base MG ZS Excite starts at $21,990 driveaway – a nail of a car that could arguably never be cheap enough – and the less hateful MG ZST Core enters at $25,990 driveaway – though still with the same asthmatic 84kW/150Nm 1.5-litre engine and flawed CVT transmission – Chery’s $23,990 driveaway Tiggo 4 Urban appears to make a lot of sense on paper.

With 108kW/210Nm from its standard 1.5-litre turbo-petrol engine, you’d need to spend much more, to $30,990 driveaway, for an equivalent MG to achieve similar performance.

And as for the least expensive Japanese and Korean (automatic) competition, you’re currently looking at $29,990 driveaway for a base 110kW/195Nm Mazda CX-3 Sport, $30,990 driveaway for an 84kW/180Nm Nissan Juke ST, $27,740 driveaway for an updated 74kW/172Nm Kia Stonic S turbo-petrol and $28,277 driveaway for Hyundai’s ageing 90kW/151Nm Venue, which is currently on run-out.

To put all that in perspective, Chery’s top-spec Tiggo 4 Pro – the Ultimate – is $26,990 driveaway.

It includes 18-inch alloys, a 360-degree camera, six-way electric driver’s seat, heated front seats, dual-zone climate control, rear seat air vents, dual 10.25-inch screens, a six-speaker Sony stereo, DAB+, wired and wireless Apple CarPlay/Android Auto, front and rear USB-A and USB-C ports, auto-on LED headlights, rain-sensing wipers, power-folding heated mirrors and an electric sunroof.

That’s an absolute heap of equipment – most of which is already standard on the $24K Urban – without even mentioning the Tiggo 4’s full suite of active-safety features, shared across both variants.

In terms of appearance, our 2024 Tiggo 4 Pro is an extensive facelift of a small SUV that has essentially been on sale in China since 2017 (called the Tiggo 5x). It’s the third update for this vehicle and brings with it an all-new dashboard, a completely fresh nose, new alloy wheels and a revised rear end, though not the completely different look aft of the rear doors sported by left-hand-drive export Tiggo 4s.

The Australian car is inoffensively handsome, including the base Urban variant wearing black 17s. And it combines with a surprisingly classy and reasonably ergonomic interior whose appearance and trimming transcends the Tiggo 4’s rock-bottom price. It also offers respectable cabin space and a rather huge 380-litre boot.

Unlike its dated MG rival, you’d never know the age of the Chery’s DNA, though we’re yet to drive one on public roads.

Our initial taste of the Chery Tiggo 4 Pro was at the Sutton Road driver training facility outside Canberra. Cue three quick laps in an entry-level Urban that was limited to 80km/h but including a lane-change manoeuvre on the fast main straight and plenty of challenging corners across the circuit’s top section.

Featuring the same T1X platform as the Omoda 5 and riding on the same 2610mm wheelbase, with the same torsion-beam rear suspension as the Omoda 5 petrol (and indeed the same engine and CVT transmission), the Tiggo 4 kicks along pretty well.

Its engine is torquey and strong, its CVT is reasonably amenable to manual shifting (in its pre-set ‘ratios’) and its handling is surprisingly fun, though in a rather perverse way.

The base Tiggo 4’s 215/60R17s don’t have a whole lot of grip and there’s an eyebrow-raising level of body roll … which is somehow rather charming, especially if you love old French cars. Handling seems reasonably safe, albeit without the grip to prevent it from washing into understeer when pushed.

Its steering is fairly accurate, though without any discernible weighting or load-up as cornering forces rise. It’s almost amusingly immune to any impact from what’s going on at road level, which may prove potentially disconcerting in the real world.

It holds up too. At the end of three laps, you could smell the Chery’s brakes (vented discs front, solid discs rear), though we were hardly hanging about.

Based on our first taste, given the enthusiasm with which we tested the Tiggo 4 Pro, perhaps Chery COO Lucas Harris is right – maybe this really is “the best value SUV in Australia” right now.

It’s been through eight months of local testing – presumably to its plethora of active-safety equipment – though we won’t be able to give a definitive verdict until it officially goes on sale here in mid-October.

For now, though, this Chery SUV argues a solid case for buying new over second-hand on a tight budget. That’s something we’ll be able to confirm for sure in the coming months.