2024 Chery Tiggo 8 Pro Max review: first Australian drive

The second bite of the Chery in Australia is now onto its third model, as the Chinese brand steps into the large-SUV segment with its Tiggo 8 Pro Max.

Sounding more like a supersized smartphone than an upper-sized family vehicle, the Tiggo 8 joins the Tiggo 7 midsized SUV and Omoda 5 small car. And like those cars, it seeks to banish memories of Chery’s last time out locally with the cheap but not particularly cheerful J1 hatch.

Chinese car makers have come a long way in the past decade or so, and are now seemingly falling over themselves to enter the Australian market – either as official subsidiaries or via importers.

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Chery Australia, which falls under the former category after previously being imported by Ateco, is in its first full year back and has had a strong start to 2024 with nearly 2500 deliveries to the end of April.

Tiggo is more SUV sub-brand than model name, and more models are set to come to Australia – both smaller (Tiggo 4) and even larger (Tiggo 9).

JUMP AHEAD

• Pricing and features
• Interior comfort and practicality, and boot space
• On the road
• First verdict
• Specifications

Pricing and features

There’s nothing like sharp pricing as a method of luring curious customers to your relatively new brand, so Chery Australia has priced its large seven-seater SUV more like a midsized five-seater SUV.

Where the majority of large SUVs are found above $50,000, the Tiggo 8 Urban base model’s $41,990 drive-away price stands out as the equivalent of about $38,990 RRP.

The Urban’s list of standard features doesn’t read like a base model, either: Heated and ventilated front seats, Sony eight-speaker audio, 18-inch alloy wheels, twin 12.3-inch digital dashboard screens, surround-view camera, ambient cabin lighting, and wireless phone charging.

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Key extras for the $43,990 drive-away Elite are automatic tailgate operation, built-in dashcam, third-row air vents (with fan-speed control), and a retractable cargo blind.

The $47,990 drive-away Ultimate upgrades the drivetrain from front-wheel drive to all-wheel drive, switches the wheels to bigger 19s, and embellishes the interior with a panoramic sunroof (with electric blind and partial opening), a 10-speaker Sony system, privacy glass, and even a fragrance system. The artificial-leather upholstery is also offered in brown rather than just black.

There are two cheaper seven-seater SUVs in Australia – LDV’s D90 costs $38,937 drive-away while Mahindra's XUV700 is even more affordable at $36,990 drive-away.

It’s also worth noting the 4.7-metre Tiggo 8 is on the smaller scale of the large-SUV segment – similar to the related Skoda Kodiaq and Volkswagen Tiguan Allspace, as well as the XUV700. The D90 is just over five metres long.

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Interior comfort and practicality, and boot space

You might consider the Tiggo 8 as simply a long-wheelbase, seven-seat version of the Tiggo 7, such is the minimal difference between the front cabin designs of the two SUVs.

They even share the same T1X platform, and while the Tiggo 8 222mm longer overall the widths are all but identical.

This includes the dual 12.3-inch digital screens comprising infotainment and driver displays, which aren’t dissimilar to the arrangement in Kia models and work just as effectively in terms of presentation and logicality.

The driver cluster layout can also be configured to prioritise a nav map just like VW’s Virtual Cockpit.

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A brief test of the ‘Hello Chery’ voice command system – requesting repeated opening/closing of the panoramic roof (in the Ultimate) suggested it’s good at ‘listening’.

As with the Tiggo 7, a flying bridge centre console features understorage for small bags/items, cupholders, cubby bin, and rubber (sideways) phone charging pad, plus USB-A and USB-C charging points but also wireless Apple CarPlay/Android Auto functionality.

A bonus over the Tiggo 7 is that even in the base Tiggo 8 Urban, the front seats come with ventilation as well as heating.

Door pockets are on the narrow side though included shaping for bottles. Above those, the wood/plastic surround section for the door handle and round audio speaker take a fair bit of inspiration from Mercedes-Benz interiors – just missing seat-adjustment controls to complete the (imitation) picture. The speaker doesn’t belong to a Burmester system despite its similarly spirally design.

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Shortcuts for heating/ventilation below the infotainment display are welcome, if not always easy to see on a sunny day. The tactility of the steering wheel buttons/toggles isn’t great – lacking a more definitive détente to confirm you’ve made an adjustment.

The wide-angle rear-view mirror is also a little weird.

In the second row, there’s heaps of legroom with the bench in its rearmost position, allowing it to be pulled forward (60-40 arrangement) as necessary to create more knee space for third-row occupants.

Setting the front passenger and second-row position immediately behind for sufficient legroom for an average-sized adult, we found a 5ft 8in occupant can sit comfortably enough in the last row for shorter trips. Anyone much taller will find headroom limited.

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Tilt-slide third-row access is only on the driver’s side.

With the third-row seats up, luggage capacity is limited to small holdalls or a few shopping bags.

They fold down for proper boot space, if not that generous for the segment at 479 litres. The seats don’t lie completely flat and in the process of folding down tend to lift up the small, rearmost boot-floor section that needs to be tidied up.

The cargo blind position is also relatively low, reducing the amount of luggage/contents that can be covered.

A spare wheel is mounted beneath the rear of the vehicle.

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On the road

Such is the obvious relationship between Chery’s Tiggo SUVs in components and electronics, it’s no surprise that the Tiggo 8 exhibits some similarly annoying active-safety habits.

Although the unintrusive lane-keep assist system is something Hyundai and Kia in particular could learn from, other areas are less successful.

As with the Tiggo 7, the adaptive cruise and lane-centring assist combine to make the steering thick and heavy, making it difficult for the driver to make accurate small inputs to compensate for cambers and crosswinds. The adaptive cruise is also overly reactive, slowing too suddenly and then accelerating a touch too aggressively.

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The driver-attention monitoring system could also do with its own monitoring for major improvement.

On the day 2 return drive, it became a running joke with my passenger how many times the system flashed ‘You are distracted’ or ‘You have been distracted for a long time’ on the driver cluster – despite my attention clearly being paid to driving safely, just not straight ahead every second.

Safe driving requires a driver to check the rear-view mirror, side-mirror and for blind spots on a regular basis, but Chery’s chastising monitor behind the steering wheel doesn’t seem to understand this.

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The one saving grace is that Chery has removed the beep that had accompanied the alerts on our Tiggo 7 launch drive, so the annoyance level was lower.

Chery says it had discovered there was no regulatory requirement for the beep so had the software modified. Thank you, Chery Australia!

It says it also continues to work on improving its electronic systems in Australia, so fingers crossed for further improvements.

The company is also investigating local suspension tuning and has had engineers out from China to understand first-hand the huge challenge presented by Australia’s remarkably varied road quality.

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And the Tiggo 8’s ride quality is very much surface dependent. Smooth or mostly even and the large Chery SUV makes supple progress. Bumpy, and the damping struggles to keep the vehicle body even, or, over rougher bitumen, the ride becomes restless.

The steering is decent, though. A middling response that’s neither direct nor slow, it’s pleasingly smooth through its turns – if with mixed on-centre accuracy: good when paired with the bigger-wheeled, AWD Ultimate, more vague on the 18s/FWD combo of the Urban/Elite.

This is not a large SUV that encourages drivers to tackle a tourist road with gusto. While there was good grip from the ?/ tyres on the Ultimate, the chassis isn’t as enthusiastic – serving up only gradual understeer if pushed. There’s also a numb feel to the brake pedal.

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This is unlikely, however, to be a deal-breaker for the Tiggo 8’s budget-conscious target market.

They’ll also no doubt appreciate the 2.0-litre turbo petrol engine. Producing 180kW and 375Nm, the 8’s outputs are up by a good amount over the 137kW/275Nm of the Tiggo 7’s 1.6-litre turbo petrol.

That ensures the bigger, heavier Tiggo 8, while not exactly brisk, provides reasonably good performance – at its best in the lighter, front-drive models.

The engine is linked to a seven-speed dual-clutch that can stumble at lower speeds, delaying acceleration, but otherwise promptly goes up and down the gears with enough smarts that the driver isn’t desperate to go DIY.

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Not that they’re encouraged to, as the manual mode engaged by holding a button on the side of the gearlever is slow to respond to shift commands. No paddle-levers are offered in any trim grade.

Official combined fuel consumption is 8.1L/100km for the FWD Tiggo 8 or 8.7L/100km for the AWD. That’s in the ballpark for turbo petrols in the segment, though, for now, there’s no frugal diesel or hybrid alternative for now to rival such powertrains available in the likes of the Kia Sorento and Toyota Kluger, or new petrol-electric Hyundai Santa Fe (launching in late May). The Chery also recommends premium unleaded, adding additional cost at the bowser.

A 1300kg braked towing capacity is also down on the 2000kg more common in the segment.

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First verdict

As is the case with the midsize Tiggo 7, the Tiggo 8 is well down the list in its category for refined and/or engaging road manners.

It’s also good to hear Chery Australia will continue its efforts to improve the driver aids in its vehicles, with the driver monitoring and adaptive/lane-centring systems worthy of particular attention.

That’s not to suggest the driving experience lacks any likeable qualities, the drivetrain – occasionally hesitant auto aside – stepping up as one of the more pleasing aspects.

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The cabin also succeeds on presentation, infotainment and space, the latter only let down by a smaller-than-average boot capacity.

This latest large-SUV offering’s most compelling selling point, though, is impressive value in terms of how much you get for you money. The Tiggo 8 is even more of a bargain than the smaller Tiggo 7.

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