If you must have a play on words, the newest Chinese brand in town is fair game. But their F6 should be taken a lot more seriously

In the early part of 2008 we had visited the Beijing motorshow and along with the stalls of our host company Great Wall Motors, we had seen what the bulk of Chinese companies had on offer. One of the learnings that we took away from the show was that there was no way you could tar all the companies or all the products with the same brush. There were visibly three different types of car makers in the country and all three had the wherewithal to participate in the motorshow.

The first was the set of car makers that had partnered with the foreign giants and thus access to the quality control, production processes and technology necessary to make a world-class product. Their products were visibly of a uniformly high quality and were just Chinese made versions of international models. The second set of car makers had taken these tie-ups or bought out technology from foreign firms and were either cloning or ripping off styles of popular models and producing cars that seemed familiar, yet were just that little bit lacking in the gloss required to top a motorshow.

The third grade was of the me-too makers, who didn’t invest enough and were blatantly copying styles. You could see the poor quality and one wonders how even the domestic customer would accept the cars made by them. Ah yes, BYD was one of the stalls we visited and while we missed the F6 in our hurry, we did see the F3 and a SLK-lookalike. Obvious shortfall in quality was in the mild ripple effect in the paint finish under the glare of the showroom lights.

So it wasn’t very surprising that the minute we got our hands on the car, the first thing we wanted to see was whether the paint was still like that. Though it is hard to judge a dark colour in sunlight, yes the ripple effect is still there. But from that point onward, everything else was a complete surprise. The car itself has the faint overtones of familiarity of a model you should have seen somewhere before. In many ways the Chevrolet Epica comes through in the styling touches as does the cars size and clean lines.

The flashy hood ornament (which we learn will not be on cars offered for sale) detracts from the otherwise clean fascia with the wraparound headlamp assembly.

The next surprise is under the hood of the  car. The engine is a Mitsubishi G469 unit of 2.4-litre capacity and generating 162 horsepower and 220Nm of torque. Hmmm... now where have we seen these engines before? Oh yes, in Mitsubishi cars like the Galant and in various other brands from around the world who have used this favourite of the mid-segment for many years. So the advantage is that you get spare parts support from just down the road as well.

Then the gearbox itself. You wouldn’t think that the Chinese car could have such a smooth gearshift pattern. This tiptronic style gearbox comes through as quite a sweet part of the experience.

You are of course expecting some real fun when you see the sharkfin at the rear of the cabin. No Navigation here so stop looking. The only bit of navigation you see is on the electronic compass that forms part of the rear view mirror. Sadly, the characters are in Chinese so you need to learn pictograms.

You don’t anying prompting for appreciating the interiors. The quality surpasses anything we have seen on other Chinese brands in town and you could have fooled us into thinking that we were inside a new Korean sedan. Even the centre console is striking in its interpretation and the feel is upmarket, especially when you factor in the wood finish and light beige interiors. The sound system gets a CD player and a proper USB port as well so as to make your listening a more complete experience.

Passenger space is not in short supply. There is ample legroom, headroom and shoulder room for all occupants and the F6 lives up to the needs of a family car.

Even the air-conditioning was upmarket with its dual zone climate control module.

One would advise the car maker to do something about the smell of the plastic in the cabin though. There has got to be a way to mask the smell or spray the car with a “not new car smell”.

In terms of performance, the car lives up to the promise of its Mitsubishi engine and good gearbox. It pulls away from stops with alacrity despite the weight of the car and braking force is well distributed. You do feel the tail in the turns, but not so much as to complain. All in all the F6 does deliver on affordable, sensible motoring at a relatively moderate price tag.