If you’re going to mix your WPS (West Philippines Sea) views with cars here, then you should probably stop reading now. But if you are looking into buying a car and you fancy a Geely, GWM, BAIC, Chery or any of the popular Chinese car brands then let me tell you my experience with owning a Geely Coolray Premium for almost 3 years.
I got my Coolray around my birthday. The Pandemic was close to being officially done and I simply wanted to let go of my over 12-year-old Japanese car.
I had a budget of just under 1 Million Pesos and I wanted something that looked nice and was fun to drive. I looked into Toyota, Mitsubishi, Honda plus other mainstream brands and just typical stuff—none of their offering I fancied.
There wasn’t anything at the time that excited me. There was however quite a cheap or perhaps “Good value” MG ZS. The top-of-the-line version of it was within my budget and there was even a big discount being offered. I loved the looks and the wife was in approval. So there we went, checked it out, and were close to getting one, then just across the busy road was the Geely North Edsa showroom.
I’ve seen the Geely Coolray on the road and I thought it was just ok looking. Plus, like a lot of people there was this weird feeling of “Its Chinese, ewww” “It’s gonna break after this and that” “Chinese car? Remember that weird-looking, tiny Chery Car?”
Then I looked into the interior. At first, I felt it was cramped for my big err “frame”, I also sat in the back and it felt cramped. So I said, “Too bad, it has a nice interior for the money”. Then I went home and spent a few more days to make a final decision. My first concern was how underpowered the ZS was, same with the Mitsu expander, honda didn’t have anything interesting going on and Toyota was just dullsville at the time.
It’s All About the….
The Geely Coolrays engine with 177 HP, a turbo 3-cylinder and had tons of awards and it had the “volvo” word on the brochure. So, out of the blue, I called the agent and asked if I could get a test drive. She said yes and that she would even bring the car to me. Less than an hour later it was just outside the house.
Immediately, it felt different. I guarantee you this wasn’t just adrenaline or excitement, I noticed that If I just took the time to adjust my seat and the steering rack I could get into the driver’s seat just fine. It still had the great interior, leather was everywhere and it felt good. Then I went back to the rear passenger seats and I asked my wife to try it out. And she too was surprised that it felt roomier than we initially tried.
I look at it now, the reason for that is because we hadn’t adjusted the seats on the Coolray. Probably an even bigger guy than me had it earlier sat in front that’s why my 30 seconds of sitting in the car inside the showroom, the Coolray felt cramped. In truth, it was just fine.
Then the time came when I did a real test drive of the car. It didn’t take long for me to appreciate its acceleration, the audible woosh of the engine when you pressed hard on the gas pedal. The brakes were good, it handled well ehough and then I switched it to Sport mode and I had the “Everything is perfect in my universe moment”. I was “oh yeah, THIS IS IT, we buying this dude”.
All the memories of the weird 90s Chinese car designs, and its bad reputation for quality simply wilted away. The Geely Coolray for me was (and still is) a GREAT CAR. I would even say that thanks to the Geely Coolray it laid the foundation for folks to step away from their comfort zone and try something different, don’t compromise and buy what you love. No doubt it changed the minds of tons of people that it’s quite possible to get a good car from China.
So what happened then?
3 Years later, I’ve had zero problems with it (oh yeah wait the rear washer fluid didn’t work at first, but they fixed that), it has over 20,000 km on it, and I’ve driven it to baguio tons of times, I’ve driven it to 4-hour daily traffic, it’s my daily, and we’ve used it as our camera car trying to catch up to supercars and admittedly have reached almost 200kph on it and didn’t blow up as many anti-Chinese car folks would tell you.
Its design hasn’t aged well but I love driving it hard, it has a relaxing ride when I’m not that cranky over a slow Mitsu G4 car in front of me. Overall, It’s been a great car.
It’s just sad that a lot of Filipinos use Chinese cars as a catalyst for expressing the sad state of the WPS issue and many others. I get it, people need to find an outlet and the Chinese car is the unfortunate receiver of frustration, annoyance, and even hate.
It’s sad that the Local newcomers have had a rough time keeping the after-sales service in with the times (Mind you, I have had a GREAT experience with Geely Fairview and North Edsa). I agree, they need to get better, and their PR teams need to handle issues quickly.
The lesson I want to convey is this: Never settle for less than what you deserve in terms of value for your money. Despite differing political opinions, it’s important not to disregard the evident technological advancements achieved by Chinese car manufacturers and finally, before you judge a car, at the very least give it a Test Drive (naks, sakto d ba?).
The truth is China makes good cars and yes I’m a very happy owner and would love and wouldn’t hesistate to buy and own another one.
