Distance: 1,386km
Date: February 16-20, 2024
Location: Florida
Up front: It’s solidly built for its $35,000 price point. The door closes with a satisfying thump, the buttons are clicky, and hydraulic pistons hiss healthily. The one glaring issue with the interior is the wide and deep panel gaps. There are cracks where coins can fall in never to be seen again.
The driving controls are logically laid out and the seat has plenty of adjustment to fit even very tall people inside this sports car. As a two-door sedan, I found the B pillar too far back and reaching for the seatbelt was annoying. The screen connects with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, connecting via Bluetooth automatically about half the time and takes a bit of fiddling around the other half of the time. I like that it’s angled downward to avoid glare from the sun.
In the back: In case you have any friends with no head and no legs, they are going to enjoy this space. The sloping roofline means there is less than six inches of headroom between the roof liner and the neck rest and legroom that stops at the middle of the femur.
The boot is large, you can theoretically fit two full-size checked bags beside each other, but it won’t get through the tiny boot opening. The rear seats fold down to create more space with an even smaller pass through, so it’s only good for long and thin items like snowboards.
Driving: Even at under 300 hp, the car is eager to accelerate and great fun at speed. The fake engine sounds help but ruins the experience once you realize it’s fake. The steering is quick to respond with a 52/48 weight distribution, but imprecise with frequent oversteering at high speed and understeering at low speed. Some engineers got the calibration slightly wrong, but still not as wrong as the Dodge Challenger.
The biggest safety issue is the lack of all around visibility. The high beltline looks cool from the outside at the cost of ruining forward, side, and rear visibility. The thick A pillar obscures entire lanes at intersections, it’s impossible to see toddlers out the back, and the B pillar makes shoulder checking a futile exercise.
