The Jetour Dashing is an automotive oddity: A fully realized vehicle from a brand that didn’t exist until just a few years ago. But a brand backed by big pockets. Built on the new Kunlun vehicle architecture as a joint-venture between Chery Automotive and Huawei, the Dashing serves as a testbed for technologies such as plug-in electrification and Level 2 autonomous driving. Real cutting-edge stuff.
But locally, Jetour will focus on covering the competitive lower-to-middle segments of the market first, ranging from the P699k Ice Cream EV up to the P1.499 million X70 Plus SUV. The Dashing, at P1.329 million, may be near the top of that, but is comfortably cheaper than many like-for-like competitors.
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Styling
It certainly doesn’t look cheap. The car’s original Chinese name, “Dasheng,” roughly translates to ‘loud.’ And the styling certainly is. It cobbles together bits of Lamborghini, Jaguar, Hyundai, and Lexus into something more cohesive than that laundry list suggests. It’s quite striking, with its muscular lines, checkerboard grille, Jaguar-smooth flanks and hidden door handles, and that slashing rear end, bookended by taillights that look like LED renditions of waving checkered flags.
Panel fit is commendably tight, especially around the frenched-in fender guards. The only naff bits are the rather glossy cladding on the C-Pillars and the plastic assembly housing the rear camera and third brake light. The rest is solid and sits nicely on 19-inch two-tone wheels with relief-cut plastic inserts, wrapped in meaty 235/55 R19 Wan-Li Flash AS028 tires.
Interior
The Dashing features a clean, upright dashboard sitting behind a large 12.8-inch touchscreen. A bit sad we don’t have the 15.6-inch 2K screen from the top-spec Chinese variant, but this is still comfortably biggest-in-class.
The interior borrows heavily from sports car themes, with black and red leather seats with suede inserts and one-piece seat backs. Dashboard panels textured to look like naked carbon look better than actual naked carbon fiber, and the open inner door handles feature leather pull-straps. Most high-contact surfaces are soft-touch, though the rear door cards are of noticeably harder plastic than the fronts. Par for the course, nowadays.
There’s a dual cellphone tray featuring 12V, USB-A, USB-C, and an astonishingly fast 50W wireless charging pad. There are three further USB-A slots inside and behind the center box, where there’s a cubby near the floor for gadget charging. While you’re down there charging your phone, take time to admire the quilted leather floor mats. Good luck keeping them clean, but dear Lord are they lovely.
Front seat space is expansive, though the center console does feel an inch or two too wide. There’s lots of elbow room in the cavernous rear seat and a nice bit of adjustable recline. The trunk features a tonneau cover and a split-level floor panel slot, allowing you to choose between maximum cargo or a flat loading floor. There’s an extra floor panel underneath that so your emergency equipment and tools aren’t sitting on top of a naked spare tire.
Engine performance
While the Dashing’s engine bay can accommodate everything up to an insane 326hp plug-in hybrid, the local 1.5-liter turbo looks a bit lost in all that space and plastic cladding. With 156hp and 230Nm of torque transmitted to the front wheels through a six-speed dual-clutch automatic, it scoots from 0-100kph in around 11.2sec. Not quite in tune with the racy looks.
Fuel economy is difficult to measure—due to reasons we’ll discuss later—but hovers between 18-20km/L at 80kph in Eco Mode, and between 6-8km/L in traffic, about what you’d expect given the power and size. No paddle shifters here, but you get a manual mode on the shift lever, as well as a Sport Mode accessible through the in-vehicle menus.
Ride and handling
Even in Sport Mode, the engine doesn’t promise a lot of high-rpm fireworks. But the low-down grunt and tight gearing make for quite a bit of fun on twisty roads. The steering is responsive, if not particularly tactile, and the Dashing corners flat, even through tighter corners. The only thing impeding progress is the messy engine overrun when you let off the accelerator, which is the last thing you want when diving into a corner under the brakes.
Sport Mode, for all its fun, is too jumpy for city traffic and tends to lurch from a stop with the Auto-Hold feature toggled on. Switched to Eco Mode, pedal response and shifts become a bit too lazy. It can take over a second to get up and go when you pull out to overtake. But if you don’t mind hanging back, it’s a perfectly fine way to eat up the kilometers.
Thanks to the sporty set-up, the ride is a bit firm, the big HT tires thumping and humming over certain surfaces, but there’s a soft edge to the secondary ride that makes it easy to live with. Sound insulation is pretty good overall, that big bluff front end keeps buffetting around the front pillars and wing mirrors minimal. I’ve sat at 100 km/h watching puddles of rain sit nearly still on the hood for kilometers on end.
Around town, that tall hood makes navigating traffic and parking lots a bit of a chore. And the tiny rear window doesn’t help, either. Thankfully, you get a 360-degree camera that turns on automatically when it detects objects in your blind spots or when you’re turning or backing up. Unfortunately, turning it on or adjusting it manually is a fiddly affair.
Extra features
And herein lies the issue with the Dashing’s high-tech vehicle systems. Every function beyond basic driving and door controls is handled through the center touchscreen. It’s a great touchscreen, 12.8-inch wide, with smooth touch response and low-lag wireless screen mirroring capabilities. It takes a little time to download and set up CarBitLife, but once it’s there, tethering is painless, and it’s smooth, bright, and sharp. But that big screen can be a big distraction. Because you have to use it for every. Little. Thing.
Need to adjust the A/C? You can toggle the fan speed with the lefthand scroll wheel-joystick on the steering wheel, but you need to wade into the Climate Control menu to adjust the temperature, recirculation, vent control, or de-mist outside the touchscreen.
Need to adjust the side mirrors? Enter Car Settings, then the maintenance submenu then the side mirror submenu. Adjust mirrors with both scroll sticks.
Auto hold? Hill-descent control? Vehicle submenu. Switching between Eco and Sport mode? Submenu. Resetting the economy gauge? Yet another submenu, then hold down the left stick to reset the meter. Don’t hold it too long, otherwise you’ll activate A/C Max mode. And this doesn’t reset the kilometer count, just the eco-gauge, which starts, weirdly, at 33km/L. Which left us to manually calculate economy in the end.
Once you get used to these ergonomic quirks, the Dashing is oddly likable. The big screen is great for watching movies while parked. Low latency, good sound, and crisp visuals. The customizable mood lighting is great for establishing, uh, mood. Keyless entry, automatic hidden door latches and a kick-to-open auto-tailgate all make for easy grocery loading and passenger pick-up. The AC, once properly set, is powerfully cold, and the giant dual pane sunroof, lets in a lot of light without letting in a lot of heat.
You don’t get a lot of the active driving aids you get on higher spec models, but you get cruise, and that 360 camera turns itself on when it thinks you might need it: in tight traffic, while making turns, or even when navigating a drive-thru. A simple, but nifty bit of vehicular automation, that.
Verdict
Of course, the Dashing is capable of quite a bit more in terms of automation. Up to Level 2, in fact. But we’re not getting that here - yet. Jetour is taking baby steps into the market with its local line-up, and while that’s a good plan, we hope that they would take some more risks. The Dashing has the potential to be the compact-midsize counterpart to the subcompact Geely Coolray. The sporty vibe reminds us of the old MG GS or the early front-drive Sorento. Also muscular, athletic bruisers with lots of space and personality - but lacking a bit in terms of power and stand-out technology. And the infotainment system, while impressive in some ways, could use some fettling and a better interface to take advantage of the big display and processing power on hand.
In the end, the Dashing is a fine crossover for the price, Reasonably specced, with good amenities and killer looks. Hopefully, if sales are good, we will get more powerful variants down the line. There’s a lot of potential in this product, and if the rest of the Jetour line is similar, a lot of potential in the brand, as well.
SPECS: 2023 Jetour Dashing 1.5T 6DCT
Price: P1,329,000
Engine: 1.5-liter turbopetrol
Power: 156hp
Torque: 230Nm
Transmission: 6-speed dual-clutch
Layout: Front-wheel drive
Seating: 5
Score: 8/10
More photos of the Jetour Dashing 2023:
