Haval H2 2017 Review

Haval must have received an email from 2017 back in 2007 saying "It’s ALL about SUVs. Get ready for it".

They heeded that advice with a partially-AWD, but exclusively SUV model range.

Arriving here two years ago, Haval now offers the mid-size H2, the larger H6 and the larger-still H8 and H9, with the H7 to come next.

After a test of the first locally tuned Haval, the H9, in Darwin recently, I was offered the opportunity to get up to speed with the H2 via a pretty epic road trip: Darwin to Adelaide in four days.

Getting acquainted
Haval sells about 1.1 million SUVs a year in China and while that’s a small proportion of the total number of new vehicles sold in the communist state, it is also the total number of cars sold across all brands in Australia each year.

My expectation was that the Haval H2 would be suitable for the domestic Chinese market on features and price, but would struggle against quality opposition.

A four-day, 3000 km road trip was a hell of an accelerated learning program and certainly gave me the opportunity to get familiar with the H2.

Visually, it is dominated by the front grill and the multiple Haval badges all over it (hello to the cashier at the servo near Elliott who asked if I was paying for the fuel on the ‘Blue Range Rover’).

I’m not sure where I place the overall external styling and I spent too much time inside it to get a sense of how I felt about the exterior. Perhaps Mazda with a dash of Europe…?

The interior is tasteful and avoids too much cheap looking plastic. The steering wheel controls and dash layout show that chief Haval designer, ex-BMW Pierre LeClercq, had a solid presence in terms of the user experience.

But why they added a non-functional button on the right side of the steering wheel to match the working left-side button is anyone’s guess -- maybe it’s a missile launch button for domestic military use?

The large C/D-pillars make blind-spot checking a challenge, though that is mitigated by large side mirrors. Overall the Haval is serviceable in terms of look and layout and fares well against better-known and more familiar looking opposition vehicles.

On long road trips, one of two things can happen; you grow closer to your travelling partner or the trip destroys your relationship. My initial impressions were not good.

The Bluetooth was ludicrously difficult to pair (I refuse to use the manual as I believe that such a simple task ought to be intuitive but, eventually, I pulled out the Book of Shame), the infotainment system reeked of "bought on eBay for lowest price + postage” and the engine seemed woefully underpowered.

An element of Stockholm Syndrome kicked in after a few days. The infotainment system would take a little while to boot up, but I was OK with that as I was not in any hurry (it was prone to the occasional audio drop-out while I was singing along to Queen/Taylor Swift/Pantera).

I still have no idea how to keep the GPS zoomed out and the reversing camera display suffers from poor contrast and backlighting. But the climate-control across the four days (outside temperature ranged from ‘hot’ to ‘Adelaide’) was as it should be; unobtrusive and did not require constant fiddling.

In the engine room
The lack of engine power meant I needed to cleverly manage the Haval when overtaking on the posted 130km/h speed limit of the Stuart Highway in the NT. This was no “pull out and punch it” situation, but required careful ranging up behind the car or road train ahead and timing it to overtake, having already got up to speed.

On these open-est of open roads, the Haval went better than expected. The engine’s lack of oomph pushed the fuel economy above 10L/100km and dropped the range to below 500km, but the cruise control held it to 130km/h without too much fuss. A lack of hills certainly helped.

The suspension calibration was nearly spot on and that was on show when I hit a pronounced ripple in the bitumen at 130km/h. The front right wheel bottomed out, but the car remained settled and no big correction was required.

The seating position was spot on and, combined with smooth and precise steering, it ate up the kilometres like me eating pizza on night three in my underground hotel room in Coober Pedy while watching TV with a six pack.

Occasionally, the Stuart Highway and the Ghan Railway line run alongside each other and I took the H2 for an extended drive on the dirt/gravel service track that runs alongside the rails. I ought not to have been surprised that the front wheel-drive Haval again exceeded expectations.

On loose surfaces, washed-out dips and typical ‘SUV but not full-on 4WD’ roads that some lucky SUVs might just spend 0.0001 per cent of their lives on, the H2 was fun and frankly dared me to push harder.

Not a great idea when you’re anywhere from 500m to 2km from the highway. Even when pushing hard, the Haval remained poised and attempts at bottoming out the front-end failed when the speed required reached scary numbers (see distance from highway data).

Like most SUVs in this segment, there’s not a lot of ground clearance (133mm), so you’ll soon find the limits off-road.

The Haval H2 is rather quirky and seems to have a whiteboard list of items added with other items evidently left for later. Case in point: it has tyre pressure gauges and temperature gauges for all four wheels, but you still need to release the petrol cap with a pull-out cable release.

As I have the memory of goldfish, multiple times I went to fill up- expecting to press on the cap as the doors were unlocked, only to find it grinning at me closed.

While groping for the fuel cap release, I accidently popped the bonnet release more than once just to show fellow drivers on the Stuart Highway that I am a truly professional road tester. (I filled up the wiper fluid just to make it look like I meant to do that).

Stiff competition
In a market crowded with quality opposition, the H2 is a mid-size SUV about the same size as a RAV4 but priced in line with small SUVs like the Mazda CX-3.

But it’s neither demonstrably better than any of its rivals and nor does it have any unique selling points (does quirky count?). Perhaps it only serves to encourage people to look at its bigger brothers in the Haval range?

There is a lot to like about the H2 and it hints at great promise for the Haval brand, but it’s clear that its wish list needs to see a lot more boxes ticked and I’d start with the engine. There are no diesels in the Haval range and while in 2025 that might make sense, in 2017 it means it’s about 100Nm short of a dragon festival.

The other quirks might give the Haval character, but character is something buyers in this segment are not looking for.

It’s importing to understand that this isn’t about Chinese-made cars not being up to standard as the design and build quality of the H2 is as good as anything else on the market.

Make a ‘Chinese make crap cars’ argument all you want using your Chinese-made iPhone. Clearly, when China wants to make something that is truly cutting edge, it can.

Despite this, to give you some idea of how well Haval and the Australian market fit together, the H2 is finding about 300 buyers here per year, which is about as many as Havals sells in a morning in China. The stats are boggling.

But it’s clear Haval is in it for the long run and, like the Korean and Japanese brands brands before them, it just needs time and determination to change the marketplace as we know it.

2017 Haval H2 Premium pricing and specifications:
Price: $23,990 (drive-away)
Engine: 1.5-litre four-cylinder turbo-petrol
Output: 110kW/210Nm
Transmission: Six-speed automatic
Fuel: 9.0L/100km (ADR Combined) / 10.0L/100km (as tested)
CO2: 214g/km (ADR Combined)
Safety rating: N/A