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In March 2026, Jaecoo made a huge splash in the automotive market when this automobile, the 7 SUV – nicknamed, the ‘Temu Range Rover’ – became the ‘best-selling’ new vehicle in the UK, with more than 10,000 units sold. No small task for any rising brand, never mind one from China with a hitherto unknown background. Now, there’s a degree of dissembling in these data, because it was actually on the strength of its registrations, rather than confirmed sales to private purchasers, which resulted in the J7 topping the SMMT’s statistics to the surprise of everyone. But even so, it cannot be denied that these objects seem to be everywhere.
Representing a gap in our evaluation process, as a highly important vehicle we hadn’t yet tested in the wider Chery Group’s product portfolio, it was perhaps with a perfect sense of timing that we arranged to have a SHS plug-in hybrid (PHEV, subsequently rebranded as a SHS-P by Jaecoo) variant of the 7 for a week in the middle of April (a month in which, SMMT’s latest figures have since shown, the J7 didn’t even get close to replicating its suspiciously outstanding March performance).
And, we’ll be blunt, we reckon all of you who’ve bought into this stuff are off your rocks. It is, by a considerable margin, comfortably the worst thing the Chery Group manufactures. In fact, it’s shamefully close to being the worst Chinese car we’ve ever driven, and given the totally shambolic level of one of its compatriot competitors, that’s an astounding feat of incompetence on the carmaker’s behalf. Here’s why we can’t for the life of us fathom out why folks are so captivated with the risible Jaecoo 7.
Test Vehicle Details
Model: Jaecoo 7 SHS-P Luxury, 2026
Cost: 7 SHS-P starting at £35,175 as tested
1.5-liter turbocharged four-cylinder gasoline engine with an electric motor and 18.3kWh battery pack
Single-speed transmission Front-wheel drive and an automated dedicated hybrid transmission
Power: 204 horsepower maximum system
Torque: maximum system torque of 310 Nm
23g/km of emissions
Economy: 403 mpg
56 miles is the range of an electric vehicle.
8.5 seconds from 0 to 62 mph
Maximum speed: 108 mph
Boot capacity: 412–1,332 liters
1,795 kg of kerb weight
Styling
The Jaecoo 7’s striking resemblance to the Range Rover Evoque is the vehicle’s most striking feature. That is, if you strain your eyes really narrowly and unleash your wildest thoughts. Of course, the J7 isn’t unsightly, and with its signature “waterfall” front grille, it’s also far from dull and uninspiring like a lot of its countrymen’s recent efforts to promote vaguely SUV-shaped vehicles.
But we’re also not going to say it’s aesthetically pleasing due to the illogical vertical “vents” behind the back wheels, the mismatched square lamps in the front bumper, and the scattered checkered-flag motifs (could you tell us about Jaecoo’s “glittering” motorsport background, please?). Even we have to admit that the Jaecoo 7’s bewildering charm is in large part due to its showroom/kerb appeal. Because other than that, we can’t seem to find anything good about it.
Interior
Before you even touch anything in the Jaecoo 7, you get a good impression of the inside. Some effort has clearly been made to make the dashboard architecture look nice, even if, like the SHS-P PHEV, it has the typical Chinese-car interior layout: massive central touchscreen, letterbox instrument cluster, bridge-like central tunnel, column-mounted shift lever, and, if you’re lucky, a driver-facing head-up display.
But when you’re building a car at a low cost and want it to feel plush, you put all the best materials you can afford in the ‘high traffic’ areas of the cabin – the things you’ll touch every day, such as the steering wheel, column stalks, and door handles. And you place all of the gaudy plastics in out-of-the-way locations, such as the farthest point of the dashtop or well down low in the footwells; Toyota, for example, is a master of this notion.
However, Jaecoo has made the fascia’s upper surface and the door cards out of pleasant, squishy plastics. And then they covered the steering wheel in horrible, slippery fake leather, outfitted the naffest set of column stalks in recent automotive history (to call the plastics used for these ‘lightweight’ would be an understatement of colossal proportions), and generally ensured that all of the key touchpoints conveyed the nastiest tactility. So the 7 always feels cheap when you drive it.
There are further annoyances here, like another one of those godawful ‘Last 50km’ trip computers – these should be deleted, as they offer information that is simply meaningless gibberish; our test car, for example, offered up such thoroughly worthless gems as ‘832.3 miles/kWh’ and then ‘-630 miles/kWh’ in short order for electric consumption, while its two indicated fuel economy figures never, ever matched up, not even once – plus the fact that every bit of information But we’ll leave it there for now.
Oh, wait, we won’t. The Jaecoo 7 has the poorest DAB receiver ever. The automobile flat refused to pick up radio signals anywhere in the bottom half of the United Kingdom. Not in Nottinghamshire, which isn’t known for its mountainous landscape. Not while travelling down the spine of England on the M1. Not while in the neighborhood of Heathrow Airport. No other test car we’ve ever tried performed so poorly at the simple task of picking up radio signals.
Realisticness
The second-row seats on the Jaecoo 7 are fairly roomy. There is that on its side, we think, but the majority of Chinese SUVs that have recently been introduced have spacious backs, so this is hardly a truly “unique” selling point of the J7. Additionally, the boot is just 412 liters in size. which is smaller than the 480-liter cargo area found in the allegedly subpar Jaecoo 5 model. When it comes down to it, how useful is the Jaecoo 7? Now be truthful.
Performance
Is there a gentleman’s agreement in the Chinese automotive business that all brands must produce a powertrain output of 150kW (204hp), and they must also all employ a 1.5-litre turbocharged four-cylinder engine if they’re not developing an EV? Honestly, we type these data out so many times across all the numerous companies’ products from the Asian countries that we’re beginning to get snow-blind to the ludicrous thought of some differentiation in powertrains. Y’know, just for a bit of diversity and everything.
In a brief moment of credit, we will at least accept that the J7 SHS-P has a huge combined range from its fuel and electric resources. A 60-litre gasoline tank and an 18.3kWh battery pack offers it a potential one-shot maximum of roughly 750 miles before having to visit either pump or public charging point, and our test car arrived with 15 per cent battery showing and yet still managed to give back around 45-50mpg during 552 miles of testing. Well, we think it was around that. As we can’t know for definite, because the blasted trip computer is effectively useless at recording any sensible medium-term data.
Other than that, though, the powertrain is exceedingly coarse in the Jaecoo 7. The 1.5 is noisy and rattles substantially through seat and wheel if you’re hammering the throttle hard, while the switch between hybrid and electric operating is not as fluid as it should be. The brake pedal has a dreadful sponginess to it and the calibration of it isn’t particularly progressive either, so slowing the J7 down isn’t a pleasant chore. Nor is speeding it up, for if this vehicle can ever expect to sprint 0-62mph in the claimed 8.5 seconds, we’ll eat our figurative hats. It’s reedy and undernourished in the extreme.
And then there’s the most strange trick of all that this car pulls. If you ever use full throttle – and you might scoff and say there’s never any reasonable need to do such a thing, but we’d suggest if you’re pulling out of a side junction into fast-flowing traffic, or you’re attempting to burst onto a busy roundabout, or you perform an overtake on a two-way road and realise in the middle of the manoeuvre that you’ve spectacularly misjudged the situation, then you absolutely will use full throttle – then when you lift off the pedal, the Jaecoo 7 keeps accelerating, for what feels like almost a second. We’ve talked about throttle lag in vehicles previously, but that’s normally when you’re applying the gas and waiting for the drivetrain to respond and create acceleration; we’ve never met a car which displays latency when you come off the power instead. What possible need might there be for this feature? Is it not potentially unsafe? How has someone mapped a throttle pedal to perform anything as terrible as this?! Bonkers.
Ride & Handling
Oh lord. If you’re hoping for Jaecoo 7 redemption in this part, look away now. You might just about be able to tolerate the unrefined drivetrain if you never drive the car particularly hard, but you absolutely won’t be able to stomach the horrible dynamics for the three or so years of a PCP or lease contract. Imagine having to live with this crap for 36 months. It makes us shudder just thinking about it.
The 7 SHS-P executes the absolutely undesirable twin ‘achievement’ of accomplishing neither ride and refinement, nor handling well. Some individuals will tell you this car rides beautifully. We’re here to emphatically tell you it does not. The suspension is so loose and slovenly that the Jaecoo slops and wallows lamentably in the aftermath of just moderate bumps in the road, so while it might be gently sprung, it does not have anything like the vertical control needed to deal with anything other than billiard-table-smooth roads. You don’t need us to tell you that such things are as rare as rocking-horse feces on the UK’s roadways network.
Worse than that is the frequent jostling the Jaecoo 7 subjects you to. Even if your eyes tell you that, while looking out of the windscreen, the road in front of the car looks to be in a semi-decent state, the sense you actually receive is that you’re sitting on an overturned plate that’s located atop a viscous liquid. You are permanently being shuffled about laterally, like a gigantic unseen hand is shaking your shoulder, and it produces superfluous head-toss and an insufferable fidget to the J7 that converts every long interstate trek into a chore. Well, that plus the massive amount of road roar permeating the interior at anything above 40mph. The din inside the Jaecoo at speed is tremendous, and we don’t use that phrase as a superlative; we mean the noise in the passenger compartment is frightful.
Still, that’s OK, because you can drown it all out by turning the radio up… uh, wait. No. No, you can’t. Because the bloody DAB receiver is so ineffably miserable.
And then there’s the handling. Which is little short of abject. The biggest offender here is the steering, which has the worst trait imaginable in the automotive world: it’s inconsistent. Turn the wheel a few degrees off dead centre, and it is sickeningly light and entirely devoid of all meaningful feel or any sensation that it is related to the vehicle’s front axle whatsoever. And then, all of a sudden, with just a touch more lock dialled in the nose of the Jaecoo veers wildly to one side or the other, depending on which direction you’re heading. It’s vile. And it doesn’t better no matter which of the three driving modes you’re in.
Couple that diabolical steering to the comically roly-poly body control which we’ve already touched upon, and when you get these moments of unnecessarily sharp response from the front end of the J7 then you also get associated hideous lean from the car, and an alarming wobble from the SUV’s shell in the aftermath of such incidents as it tries (and fails) to quickly settle back down on its woeful springs and dampers. So don’t for a moment dream that there’s a nice chassis lying beneath all this garbage, because there obviously isn’t.
The Jaecoo 7 is vicious in towns, where it smashes and thumps disconsolately about the place on its 19-inch wheels that feel every last ounce of their unsprung mass, and more besides. It’s uneasy and unpleasant out on faster-flowing A-roads, where it permanently shoves its occupants from side-to-side as it rolls along. It’s not even particularly good on well-finished highways, because it’s so boisterous at pace and the secondary ride has a continual background judder to it that speaks of the lack of refinement in the cut-price springs and dampers. And it’s totally pathetic on an interesting B-road, just to round off the ‘perfect’ show of kinematic ineptitude.
Seriously, is anyone truly trying these J7s before they buy them? If they are, have they somehow been turned insensate? How the hell would you be able to put up with this awful grade of vehicle tune for anything more than, hm, maybe six hours, max? It’s horrible.
Value
Here we come to the great nub of the matter. Apparently, some aggressively competitive finance deals plus the amount of standard kit you receive on the Jaecoo 7 makes it incomparable value, so people are just stating ‘it’s all about the monthly cost and nothing else’, thereby rationalizing ending up with this atrocity of a car. But the one we tried was in excess of thirty-five thousand pounds before options. How, in any right-thinking person’s perspective, is it cheap? Wouldn’t the 28-grand Jaecoo 5 ICE be even more inexpensive, if you truly must have something like this and not a well-established European, Japanese, Korean or American rival?
We’d also voice caution about the fact that some of the electronics on our very young, very low-mileage test car didn’t operate. Like the DAB receiver. And the proprietary satnav mapping (we allegedly had to register a SIM card to for it to run). And, linked to this, the wireless Android Auto, which had a complete meltdown when heading to the launch of the Jaecoo 8, of all things, down near High Wycombe, so that the map kept glitching to an indeterminate point of the A46 near Bingham in Notts, when we’d in truth driven all the way through Northamptonshire and were currently on the M40 near Bicester. Or one of the indications, which during the entire week the Jaecoo was on test sounded with an arrhythmic pattern in the cabin like an ECG warning a heart attack. How in the name of all that is holy have LED indicators malfunctioned on a car which hadn’t yet even covered 2,000 miles of its operational life?
And then there are the tales you may find on the online owners’ clubs of automobiles shredding their driveshafts within the first 700 miles. Or pouring their coolant everywhere. And the fact that the much-vaunted, seven-year, 100,000-mile warranty which is supposed to offer such peace of mind to consumers actually has several worryingly significant exclusions in it, for parts that would normally be covered by other manufacturers and which will be big-ticket repair items if they go wrong.
So what if the Jaecoo 7 is ‘less than 300 quid a month’? Is that really justifiable, if you have to put up with so many enormous and unpleasant concessions to end up with this SUV? We say: no, it absolutely is not. If anything, the J7 SHS-P is not nearly cheap enough.
Verdict
Look, we’ve driven plenty of Jaecoo, Chery and Omoda items in the past few years, and while some of them have been fairly awful, like this one or this one, others we’ve tested, we’ve been rather taken with. The Omoda 9 SHS looked promising enough, despite some evident shortcomings. The Jaecoo E5 turned out to be a surprisingly impressive cheap EV. And, later still, the aforementioned Jaecoo 8 and its closely related Chery Tiggo 9 alternative both, in our view, highlighted just how far this Chinese company has come in an inordinately short span of time.
All of which leaves us astonished by quite how poor the Jaecoo 7 is, especially given it is the one which is generating the largest uptake with the British motoring public. In its defence, the 7 was the first model the business sold here and it has moved on substantially in vehicle tuning since then, so there’s every chance a facelift of the 7 might see its chassis tightened up by a large degree. Additionally, we want to publish a far less critical evaluation of the Jaecoo 5 gasoline on this website soon, which should hopefully show that we’re not solely guilty of anti-Chinese bias.
But the Jaecoo 7 SHS-P is a very horrible automobile. There is a wide world of difference between something being wonderful value since it gives an experience similar to dearer rivals, just for less cash, and then something simply being cheap and ugly, and the J7 is firmly in the latter camp of these two. Yes, it’s roomy inside. Yes, everything appears OK on the outside. And certainly, it has tons of gear and is a bit more inexpensive than some of its primary rivals. But there’s a reason it’s cheaper than the competition, and that’s because it’s a heck of a lot worse in all critical areas. Seriously, do yourself a favour and avoid the Temu Range Rover. Buy something else instead, even if it costs you more dough. Anything. All the even somewhat similar alternatives are considerably superior to this monstrosity of an SUV.
