Chery Tiggo 8 Review & Prices

The Chery Tiggo 8 is a chance for one of China’s biggest car brands — and the company behind such other brands as Jaecoo and Omoda — to make a big own-name splash in the UK. To do that, Chery has decided to make the new Tiggo 8 seven-seater SUV amazingly cheap.

Yes, it is confusing that Chery’s Tiggo 7 is a five-seater but this Tiggo 8 is a seven-seater. You might also be baffled by the price, because the Tiggo 8 is as much as £5,000 cheaper than a seven-seat Skoda Kodiaq.

Buying the Tiggo 8 is a bit like going to that new fast food restaurant in town and being impressed that you can get a massive double cheeseburger with all the toppings for the same price as a tiny cheeseburger from the McDonald's saver menu. Whether it’s actually better remains to be seen, though.

It’s quite a decent-looking car, by SUV standards. Okay, so no-one is going to be hanging an oil painting of the Tiggo 8 in an art gallery, and its ultra-generic styling won’t turn any heads – other than people asking ‘what’s that?’ – but it’s perfectly handsome enough.

The interior is fairly generic too, but in a good way. Yes, there are the expected big screens for both instruments and infotainment, but Chery has kept some proper switches on the centre console and just under the big screen. There’s a separate touch-sensitive panel for the air conditioning controls too, which at least means you don’t have to go menu-hopping just to turn up the heat a bit.

There are also some rather nice optional quilted leatherette seats, plenty of space, and one crucial advantage for the Tiggo 8 is that it’s able to combine plug-in hybrid power with a full seven-seat layout, which the Skoda Kodiaq can’t do.

There’s a basic 1.6-litre turbo petrol engine, with front-wheel drive, for the entry-level Tiggo 8, and the option of a more powerful plug-in hybrid, based around a 1.5-litre engine and an electric range of up to 56 miles on a full charge of its battery. Chery claims that this ‘Super Hybrid’ model is good for 745 miles of driving if you start on a full battery and a full tank.

You can check out our first impressions of this seven-seat newcomer, and check back for the full review once we’ve spent some time with the car. However, if you can’t wait and you’re looking for maximum value from your seven-seat family car, you can browse the latest Chery Tiggo 8 deals and Tiggo 8 lease deals on Carwow right now. And when it’s time to sell your current car, Carwow can help with that, too.

The Chery Tiggo 8 is almost alarmingly cheap, coming in — as mentioned — a full £5,000 cheaper than a basic Skoda Kodiaq, and also dramatically undercutting the likes of a Peugeot 5008 or a Kia Sorento. None of those cars are as well-equipped as standard as the Chery, so it’s clearly a company that’s following the same playbook as Hyundai did in the 1990s; sell a cheap car with great equipment and a long warranty. It’s a hard tactic to argue with.