I implore you — don’t become GWM Cannon fodder

I know it’s starting to seem as if I hate all Chinese cars, and it’s fair to ask whether I’m the problem, but in this case everyone else I know despised this giant, gosh-ugly blob of metal too.

GWM Cannon XSR. Picture: Supplied

You’ve seen these people, perhaps you’ve even been these people, although I hope not. They’re the ones in the supermarket peering at the small print on the price tags, trying to work out which brand of toilet paper is cheaper per 100 sheets, or which flavour-free, saliva-sapping crackers provide the best value per dollar.

These folks, not so much price conscious as save every cent-ient beings, are the only ones I can imagine buying a GWM Cannon dual-cab pick-up truck, on the basis that it’s a very cheap car when you work out what it costs by the kilo (with a shockingly low starting price of $35,990 it comes in at just $18.32 per kg, compared to $20.56 for a Mazda CX-5 or $24.07 for a comparable Ford Ranger).

GWM Cannon XSR. Photo: Supplied

Now look, I know it’s starting to seem as if I hate all Chinese cars – GWM stands for Great Wall Motors – and it’s fair to ask whether I’m the problem, but in this case everyone else I know despised this giant, gosh-ugly blob of metal too. It obscured my house for a week; honestly, I had neighbours asking me if I was OK. And I am used to seeing a look of mild disgust on my wife’s face, but asking her to go for a drive in the Cannon made her bilious.

To be fair, my daughter, who is suddenly obsessed with bees and their wondrous waggle dancing, did become interested in the Cannon when I first took her for a drive in it, because she was convinced that the noises it was making suggested there were at least three large hives under the bonnet, and that those bees sounded both angry and tired.

Incredibly, the unforgivably awful noises that the single-turbo four-cylinder diesel engine makes are far from the worst thing about driving this Cannon, which has suspension so woeful that I had passengers begging me not to hit so many bumps… on an almost entirely smooth road. Anyone who lives in a suburb with speed humps would be well advised not to consider this GWM unless they enjoy the sensation of seasickness. The terrible ride quality isn’t the worst feature, either. Nor is the vague and rudimentary steering, accessed via a wheel that feels cheap to the point of temporary.

The eight-speed automatic transmission takes the prize because it changes gear more often than a runway model, yet with none of the sex appeal. The gearbox is forced to work so hard because it is attached to a 2.0-litre diesel engine that is the mechanical equivalent of Atlas carrying the world on his shoulders. Outputs of 120kW and 400Nm are simply not enough for a truck this big, or not enough if you want to get to your destination on the same day you left.

Physically, literally, the GWM Cannon is a lot of car for the money, because it’s absolutely enormous, with its 5.4m length making it possible to park not only in two car spaces at once, but two different suburbs.

I took it to the inner-city Sydney enclave where I used to live, possibly just to see how angry I could get, and it felt like using a boulder to go ten-pin bowling.

I also noticed that my Cannon had a snorkel, the kind that serious off-road vehicles have to allow them to ford streams or invade small island nations. But considering how thin and insubstantial the vehicle’s doors felt – often when you pull them shut they don’t close properly, and every time you do they make a sound like an aluminium can hitting a window – I’d be more likely to drive this thing into Parliament House to protest the fact that our lack of emissions standards allows diesels like this to be sold than into a body of water.

I was also somewhat stunned to discover that the tailgate cannot be locked, which seems like the kind of oversight that should get someone, somewhere, sacked.

Further research revealed, alarmingly, that the version I was driving is called the Cannon-XSR, which means that it’s the super-tough, ruggedly off-road version – a notional competitor for something like the Nissan Navara Warrior – which means that it gets features like that silly snorkel, underbody protection, “tube-style sidesteps” (and you certainly need them, and possibly oxygen assistance, to climb all the way up into it) and a locking front differential.

All this extra kit, and the notional ability to drive over boulders and smash into wilderness areas, costs extra, of course, which meant that my GWM Ute Cannon-XSR actually comes with a price tag of $52,990, which, at 1965kg, comes to $26.97 a kilogram. I don’t need to be a savvy bargain hunter to know that that is simply too much for a vehicle that feels as basic and brittle as this.

I understand – well, no I don’t, but I accept – that there are people out there who feel they must have a giant ute like this in their lives, but I would implore them not to become GWM Cannon fodder.

GWM Cannon

ENGINE: 2.0-litre four-cylinder single-turbo diesel (120kW/400Nm)

FUEL ECONOMY: 9.4 litres per 100km

TRANSMISSION: Eight-speed automatic, all-wheel drive

PRICE: $52,990

RATING: 0.5 out of 5