You may not have heard of the Ora Funky Cat. It wasn’t on my radar until a few months ago and I’m a professional motoring writer.
It has a wild and wacky name, certainly. But what else is it? Well, it’s a car made by GWM, or Great Wall Motors, a Chinese firm that previously tried to crack the UK market with a pickup called the Steed.
The Ora Funky Cat is an electric car that’s good looking, has a polished interior, a reasonable range, and a very competitive price tag.
Scotland was the Funky Cat’s first UK outlet, with the cars initially being sold through the Peter Vardy dealer network.
First impressions
When the Ora Funky Cat arrived at my house in Dundee my first thought was that it’s bigger than I was expecting. Its cutesy, bubble-eyed looks are reminiscent of a Nissan Micra or a Mini.
In the flesh, however, it’s much closer in size to a Ford Focus or Vauxhall Astra. Step inside and it gets bigger still. The Funky Cat has a Tardis-like interior, with oodles of head and legroom in the front and rear.
The only downside is the boot, which at 228 litres is pretty small. Drop the back seats and you can fit 858 litres of gear in there.
GWM has not tried to win the range arms race with the Ora Funky Cat. Instead, they’ve given the car enough range to satisfy the majority of drivers without driving up price and weight with a huge battery.
The 48kWh battery endows the Funky Cat with an official range of 193 miles. As is the case with the official MPG figures for petrol and diesel cars, this has to be taken with a pinch of salt. You can expect around 170-180 miles in summertime, dropping to perhaps 130-140 in the winter with the lights and heater blasting.
Price
At the moment there’s only one version available, the all-bells-and-whistles First Edition, which costs £31,995. Less expensive versions are on their way, but even the top spec version is cheaper than similarly sized EVs such as the Volkswagen ID3, although the excellent MG4 does pip it with a startling £26,000 price tag.
For that money you get a lot of kit. There are twin 10.25in touchscreens, one for the infotainment and the other for the instrument displays. You also get 360 degree cameras, keyless entry and start, and wireless phone charging.
While the twin screens look terrific (a pair of animated fish swim lazily across them when you enter the car, accompanied by soothing music) the accompanying user-interface is pretty grim.
There are three large tabs for online music streamers that must be popular in Asia but that I’d never heard of. You do get digital radio but the touchscreen icons are small and very difficult to use on the move.
Driving
The Funky Cat is perfectly pleasant to drive. It feels zippy off the mark and with an 8.3 second 0-62mph time there’s plenty of power for overtaking. I drove it from Dundee to Kinross and at 70mph noise is subdued enough to converse with a passenger without raising your voices.
Light steering makes easy to thread through traffic in town and the 360 degree camera makes reverse parking a cinch. The suspension is also good at soaking up bumps and potholes.
I took custody of the Ora Funky Cat with low expectations for the car but it grew on me steadily during the week I spent with it.
Yes it has flaws. The boot is too small and GWM really need much better infotainment software. But all the important core ingredients are correct. It looks good inside and out. It has a usable range. There’s loads of passenger space. It has good road manners and drives nicely. And most importantly, it’s very competitively priced.
Facts
Price: £31,995
0-62mph: 8.3 seconds
Top speed: 99mph
Range: 193 miles
Emissions: 0g/km
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