GWM Haval Jolion Pro Review & Prices

The GWM Haval Jolion Pro is a long name for quite a simple car. It’s a hybrid SUV, around the same size as a Suzuki S-Cross or Volkswagen T-Roc, promising a grown-up driving experience for not very much money. In fact, it’s even cheaper than a hybrid Dacia Duster.

It’s like shopping at Aldi when all of a sudden a mega discount warehouse opens next door - you think you’re already getting the best value, but is there more for your money to be had elsewhere?

As well as the aforementioned Duster, alternatives to the Haval Jolion Pro include the MG ZS hybrid, the Renault Captur Hybrid or the Toyota Yaris Cross.

Unfortunately for the Haval, first impressions aren’t fantastic - especially if you put it next to the rugged-looking and actually very stylish Dacia Duster. It’s pretty bland, with a large grille bearing the Haval name up front. And there are some really odd details, like the gigantic rear number plate, the inelegant boot spoiler, or the fact the wheels are set so far in from the sides of the car - great for avoiding kerbing, but it does rather make it look like it’s wearing a pair of shoes that are too tight.

The interior is pretty generic-looking too. You get various shades of grey, black and silver, but the design isn’t very inspiring and it’s a bit strangely laid-out. The panel of switches under the central touchscreen aren’t for functions you’ll want to use very often, and the trio of slot-shaped storage bins either side of the rotary gear selector really aren’t much use to anyone.

The tech isn’t the best, either. The infotainment system doesn’t have a DAB radio, which is odd, and though it does have smartphone connectivity it’s through a surprisingly unreliable wired connection. But even that’s better than trying to use the built-in interface - the menus don’t make much sense, and some of the onscreen buttons you have to hit particularly for the climate controls are tiny. You’ll also find some dubiously translated English.

It’s at least pretty spacious - a six-foot adult can comfortably sit behind a driver of a similar size, with good headroom and legroom. The boot, however, is absolutely pants - at 255 litres in capacity, it’s smaller than most hatchbacks, let alone the practical SUVs with which it’s trying to compete.

The Jolion Pro may have quite a powerful hybrid engine - on paper - but it doesn’t feel like it when you’re driving. It’s clunky when switching between petrol and electric power, noisy on the motorway, and not even that efficient either, averaging around 40mpg where a Dacia Duster will get close to 60mpg.

With suspension that thuds over bumps, steering that feels like it’s connected to the front wheels via radio and controls that seem intent on frustrating the driver, it’s fair to say that the Haval Jolion Pro falls short in most areas compared to the alternatives.

You can nonetheless see our best GWM Haval Jolion Pro deals right here on Carwow, or find a great deal on other GWM cars. You can find a used GWM for sale here too, and remember that Carwow can even help you to sell your old car when the time comes.

The GWM Haval Jolion Pro starts at £23,995 for a ‘Premium’ model, which is actually the base trim. For that you get a 7.0-inch driver display and 10.3-inch infotainment screen, plus 17-inch alloy wheels, rear parking sensors, keyless entry and a glut of safety assistance systems.

There’s a massive jump of £4,000 to the ‘Lux’ model, which gets a bigger 12.3-inch display, artificial leather upholstery, an electric driver’s seat, 18-inch alloy wheels, a 360-degree camera and LED headlights, and a further £2,000 jump to the ‘Ultra’ for roof rails, ambient lighting, a wireless phone charger, head-up display and panoramic sunroof.

This means that, while the Premium version is a little cheaper than the entry-level Dacia Duster hybrid, the Ultra model is knocking on the door of larger, more upmarket SUVs like a Nissan Qashqai. It’s more expensive than the MG ZS hybrid, too, which starts at less than £23,000, while a smaller but superior Toyota Yaris Cross runs it pretty close.

Powerful on paper, but a clunky hybrid system and disconnected driving experience make the Haval Jolion Pro quite unpleasant to spend time in

In town

The Haval Jolion Pro is at its best around town - in common with quite a few hybrids. Though the battery pack isn’t huge, it runs on electricity for short periods of time and is happy enough to cut the engine when slowing down for a junction or roundabout.

Like the MG ZS, the Haval has a relatively powerful electric motor supported by a weak petrol engine - the opposite to the Dacia Duster or Toyota Yaris Cross - and as a result it’s quite peppy away from the lights with good response and reasonable acceleration.

There are frustrations, though - the suspension doesn’t deal well with big bumps, thudding into the cabin. Smaller annoyances include the fact that the gear selector requires you to be very slow and deliberate when switching between drive, neutral and reverse - and there’s no physical feedback, so you have to look down at the fairly dim LED indicator.

On the motorway

The Haval Jolion Pro only uses a two-speed gearbox, so getting up to speed on the motorway is quite a noisy experience as the car can’t change up until it’s going fast enough for the higher gear. It’s not slow, but it doesn’t feel appreciably quicker than the 140hp Dacia Duster - which isn’t what you’d expect considering the Haval has over 190hp.

The adaptive cruise control works okay but the lane-keeping aids are infuriating, throwing a barny every time you so much as glance at the white line. The same is true of the driver attention monitor, which flashes up with a rather quaint ‘Hey! Don’t stray!’ warning if it thinks you’re directing your attention away from the road ahead. Which would be okay if it didn’t get angry every time you turned your head at a roundabout, junction or sliproad too.

On a twisty road

The Haval’s lumpy-feeling suspension isn’t especially confidence-inspiring on a bumpy B-road, but the worst element is the steering, which feels totally disconnected from the front wheels.

While there is a ‘Sport’ mode, you do have to ferret through several layers of menu to find it, and once there it doesn’t really help matters - it makes the accelerator pedal a bit more responsive and adds artificial weight to the steering. Neither of which make the car very enjoyable to drive.

Lots of space in the back seat, but storage up front is poor and the boot is a joke

The Haval Jolion Pro’s front seats are okay. They’re a bit flat, but you won’t need loads of support in the corners as the rest of the car doesn’t exactly encourage spirited driving. From the mid-trim, the driver gets six-way electrical adjustment, and on top-spec Ultra models the passenger gets four-way electric adjustment, but it’s a shame that the passenger never gets height adjustment. There’s also no configurable lumbar support at any level, and even on the top-spec car only the driver gets seat ventilation - which feels stingy.

Storage is pretty poor. The door bins and glovebox are an okay size, but the cupholders are too close together and only one of them fits a regular sized drink. The wireless phone charging pad is too flat, so your phone’s liable to come flying off, and either side of the gear selector are three weird slots which can’t really be used to store anything.

Space in the back seats

The Jolion Pro’s back seats are pretty roomy. There’s space for a six-foot passenger to sit behind an adult of equal size, and they’ll be able to stretch out a bit - there’s more room here than in the back of a Dacia Duster or Toyota Yaris Cross. The seat base is quite flat and thinly padded, though, so it’s not desperately comfortable. 

You get ISOFIX points on the outer rear seats, small door bins and a couple of USB ports in the centre.

Boot space

At just 255 litres in capacity, the Haval Jolion Pro’s boot has about the same capacity as a Kia Picanto city car. That’s due to the height of the floor - you initially think there must be some storage space underneath, but that’s all taken up by batteries - both the hybrid battery and the 12V one for the car’s auxiliary functions. 

As a result even a couple of shopping bags will sit so high that you’ll see them in the rear-view mirror, and forget carrying more than one or two carry-on suitcases. You can fold the rear seats down for a little extra space, and it’s the first car we’ve ever tested where there’s a step down from the load area onto the folded seatbacks. It really is poor and scuppers the Haval’s credentials as a family SUV.

The Haval Jolion Pro’s interior is not particularly stylish, easy to use or well-built

The Haval’s interior feels very generic and conventional, not necessarily a bad thing - but certainly not a very exciting one either. However, you only have to sit down and start touching things before you realise it’s all very cheap and quite nasty-feeling - from the padded plastic spanning the dashboard to the hard scratchy stuff adorning the centre console and door cards.

The central touchscreen is also pretty awful. It’s littered with intricate menus, and items seem to be thrown in without any care - why is the lane-keeping assist a ‘Car’ setting, while the driver attention monitor a ‘System’ one? The home icon - which you’ll be using a lot - is right up in the furthest corner from the driver, and it’s so tiny that it’s really difficult to hit.

There’s no built-in sat-nav - or, weirdly, DAB radio - but there is wired Apple Carplay and Android Auto. We found the connection to be quite spotty, though. There’s also a head-up display, which is small, low-res and for the entire week we tested the car had an envelope symbol referring to a message that we couldn’t find.

There are other quirks that may have been unique to our test model but are worth mentioning - the right-hand side of the steering wheel controls, which only started working halfway through the week, were particularly frustrating. The brightness control for both displays did the opposite, working initially but halfway through our media loan became greyed-out and wouldn’t let us alter the brightness.

There’s also a panel of switches next to the wheel which didn’t work at all, worrying as one of these is the headlamp aim. Hopefully most Haval Jolion Pros don’t come from the factory with the lights set to blind all oncoming traffic, but ours did and there was no way to solve it.

Fuel economy is pretty disappointing given that the Haval Jolion Pro is a hybrid. GWM claims you should be able to get 47mpg - we struggled to reach 40mpg during our time with the car. An MG ZS hybrid will do 50mpg, a Dacia Duster closer to 60mpg and a Toyota Yaris Cross well over 65mpg - the Haval really isn’t any more economical than a petrol equivalent such as a Volkswagen T-Cross.

CO2 emissions are a claimed 133g/km, which isn’t low enough to make it a decent company car option, nor does it entitle you to ultra-low first year road tax. But at least all Jolion Pros are cheap enough to dodge the expensive car supplement.

The Haval Jolion Pro hasn’t been specifically tested by Euro NCAP, but in the equivalent tests for the Australian and New Zealand market it scored five stars, ranking particularly highly for its assistance systems.

They might work, but they’re so hyperactive that - on British roads at least - you’ll want them turned off before every drive. Forget to do so and the Haval is such an obnoxiously bongy car that you soon start to tune them out, making them useless anyway.

GWM hasn’t sold enough cars in the UK to comment on reliability yet, but there aren’t too many GWM dealers around and parts supply has been known to be spotty, so we wouldn’t recommend going for one unless you have a dealer quite local to you. GWM does at least provide a five-year, unlimited-mileage warranty which is quite generous.