The new Cowin X3 SUV has been launched on the Chinese car market. Price starts at 66.600 yuan and ends at 96.900 yuan. The Cowin X3 debuted in April on the Beijing Auto Show. It has become a fine looking little car, not over-styled like so many local Chinese stuff, with simple lines making for a fine balance. Weird alloys with red brakes are very good.
Cowin Auto is a new car brand under Chery Automobile focused on making cheap and somewhat trendy vehicles for young car buyers living in second and third tier cities, a booming new market in China with a vast potential for zillions of sales.
Cowin Auto will develop new vehicles from scratch and they will inherit several vehicles that are now sold under the Chery name. The Cowin X3 is based on the long-running Chery Tiggo 3 SUV, it is the production version of the 2014 Cowin i-CX concept,
The interior is beautiful and very trendy slash modern. Three air vents on dash top, black and gray color scheme with orange stitching, a badass 10.1 inch screen in the center, and a 7 inch screen between the dials.
The graphics are super sharp, projecting any sort of useful and useless information the driver may require.
Center air vents shows the temperature inside the car. Cowin’s infotainment suite runs on the new Chery-developed ‘iCar 1.0’ operating system. It connects with Bluetooth to all smartphones and tabs. Start button for the car is located below the screen on the left side, just to the left of the on/off button of the screen itself. Better not mix ‘m up!
The graphics are great again. Seen here the menu for the EPS system. Only a few years ago only hyper expensive cars has this sort of stuff build-in. Now a cheap Chery got it. Times are a changing; high tech is for everybody now.
Rear lights are fashionably small. Spare wheel cover much bigger than wheels. We see this a lot lately on new Chinese SUV’s.
Eyes are a bit angry, Cowin logo proudly in the center of the grille. Roof rails appear to be usable.
Bit messy under the bonnet, especially the heat isolation under the windscreen.
The Cowin X3 is only available with a 1.6 liter four-cylinder petrol with 127hp, sending horses to the front wheels via a five-speed manual or a five-speed automatic. Later on a 1.4 turbo and a plugin-hybrid will join the line-up.
Many Chinese car makers still don’t get their pipes right, and sadly Cowin is one of them. Look how that pipe sticks out under the bumper, on the left side, pointing downwards and side wards in a wuzzy angle, not being integrated in the rest of the design at all. Too bad, even more so because the rest of the car is really good, and good for the money. Hopefully they fix it with the next facelift.
