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02/01/2024

The big daddy of big daddy Audis, the China market only A8L Horch. Only my second time seeing one in person, and it’s yet again a media test car (not our media test car, sadly). Honestly never seen one on the road since it debuted over a year ago, and I understand why. Who’s going to buy this big German sedan with an unpronounceable name when you could buy the other big German sedan with the slightly more pronounceable name and much more brand recognition, the Maybach S-Class.

29/12/2023

Teased it in my recent video, but here is the Hyper SSR in all its glory! You know me, so you can probably guess how I feel about the color (I love it). No, we still haven’t been invited to drive it yet, but neither has anyone else, so there’s still hope!

27/12/2023

Meet the Hyper HT! With a price of just a little over 40,000 USD, it’s now the cheapest way to get falcon doors.

22/12/2023

Is it possible to have a “coupe” MPV in the same way we have “coupe” SUVs? My answer was, no. Then I saw the XPeng X9…

21/12/2023

Family photo featuring the Yangwang U8 and our BYD Yuan PLUS (aka Atto 3).

18/12/2023

We saw a whole bunch of Yangwang U9 prototypes here in Shenzhen, including many on the mountain roads around the city, but this is the only one we saw that looked close to production spec. Note the goose neck wing, which looks different than the one we saw at the Shanghai Auto Show (see photos). Proof that there will be a few different versions?

17/12/2023

Love that I’m seeing more and more modified NEVs like this Li Auto L9.

16/12/2023

Wait, did you think I was done posting all the cool, modded Tank 300s that I see? Not a chance!

15/12/2023

Spotted this sea foam green G6 while visiting XPeng headquarters, it might replace the orangeish red as my favorite G6 color (see second pic)

15/12/2023

We’re in Guangzhou to drive the XPeng X9, video coming soon!

11/12/2023

Behold, the updated Wuling MINI EV Macaroon! Exterior changes include the white color contrast areas front and rear, which make it look like every other mini electric on the market. Not a fan. Interior does finally get a center screen, and an actual instrument binnacle! Also digging the cloth seats. What do you guys think? Is it an upgrade or a downgrade?

09/12/2023

Random Shanghai Saturday car spotting

08/12/2023

What do you think, is this abandoned S500 slammed on bags, or has the suspension just completely collapsed? Looks great either way!

08/12/2023

It’s a breeze to find your seat at test drive events when your placard is the only one with an English name on it😂

07/12/2023

There’s yet another new dog in the Haval kennel! This time, it’s the Fierce Dog, which joins the Big Dog and seems to replace the Cool Dog as far as I can tell. It looks like a little Land Rover Defender to me, but what do you guys think?

05/12/2023

Get ready for this purple beast to hit the channel later this week!

02/12/2023

Spotted this modified ET5 Touring today, what do we think? The bits all seem to be real carbon fiber!

30/11/2023

Check out my nephew’s reading material! It was only through colossal act of self-control that I did not spend my entire evening reading these instead of interacting with other human beings.

26/11/2023

The M-Hero 917 is easily the most ridiculous SUV I’ve ever seen, and our review is now live. Desert Eagles for door handles? Aircraft throttles for a transmission k**b? 800-1000 hp? Yes, yes, and yes!

19/11/2023

The Zeekr 007 was even better in person than in photos. Note the pressed carbon fiber (Fake? Real? Hard to tell) on the front end of the yellow car in photo #1). That tells me that the crazy LED front end might not be standard (photo #2). Got a tour of the interior from the head interior designer (turns out he enjoyed my review of the Zeekr 009!), but no photos allowed. It was very reminiscent of the Zeekr X, but a bit more upscale and with some cool uses of LED lighting. This is very much a car I’m looking forward to reviewing.

19/11/2023

Just a gentle reminder that retro design goes wrong much more often than it goes right…

18/11/2023

Sorry to say that there won’t be any English content from the Guangzhou Auto Show this year, but I did attend and I will try to share some thoughts! That starts with one of the most unlikely pairings I’ve ever seen. Perhaps you all heard about the HiPhi A, an even more powerful version of the HiPhi Z with three axle-mounted motors (one up front, two in the rear) making a total of 1287 hp. 0-100 is said to “just over” 2 seconds. I wonder if it’s actually faster than the Zeekr 001 FR…

But why is it called the A? According to the HiPhi PR person I spoke to on the stand, it comes from Apollo, one of their partners in creating the HiPhi A. Who’s Apollo? Remember the Gumpert Apollo, that wild super car from nearly 20 years ago (photo #4 from Wikipedia for context)? Now the company is just called Apollo, and the car in photo #5 is their current model, the Apollo Intensa Emocione. With a naturally aspirated 6.3L V12 making 780 HP shoved into a full carbon fiber monocoque, it couldn’t be more different than the HiPhi A. It also costs around 3,000,000 USD and they’re only making 10 for the whole planet.

Like I said, an interesting pairing!

13/11/2023

Took my German friend to a NIO dealership! He was not impressed by the space in the ET5 Touring (he’s 1.95m tall or 6’5”, so we’ll disregard his opinion), or the panel gaps (he’s right about this one, they were worse than any test car I’ve ever driven). Even so, even he had to admit that that the Germans would be in trouble when Chinese cars really start competing in Deutschland.

10/11/2023

Turns out those daytime running lights I mentioned in my last post are actually a 90-inch matrix made up of 7296 individual LEDs and it’s called the Stargate😯. As a child of the 90s, I cannot help but love that name.

09/11/2023

Got really lucky last week and a friend of ours happened to be testing an XPeng P7 Wing Edition* when we had our Hyper GT test car. These are the sole options in the “mid-size electric sedan with lidar and scissor doors” segment, so which one would you want to drive home?

*This was a P7, not the refreshed P7i with lidar. However, the current P7i Wing costs the exact same as the top spec Hyper GT with lidar.

06/11/2023

We found the one person who thought the Lynk & Co 03+ was too subtle…

05/11/2023

A warm welcome to the latest member of the Wheelsboy fleet! Our colleague Justin picked up this 2008 MG TF for next to nothing, and while it feels like everything from the plastic trim to the steering feel are looser than a hockey player’s teeth, it’s still a pretty sweet ride!

03/11/2023

Hyper GT or NIO ET5 Touring, which one you driving home?

01/11/2023

Finally, the Song L in the flesh! It’s even better looking than I thought it would be, and the interior is a serious upgrade in terms of material quality, at least on the top spec model. Only issue right now is price, as the presale starting price of 220,000 RMB (30,000 USD) might be too high depending on features. Yes, I know that sounds insane, but that’s the level of competition we’re working with here in the Chinese car market.

30/10/2023

Both too expensive for what they are, but both also extremely charming.

29/10/2023

A member of the Wheelsboy team was at the official launch of the Zeekr 001 FR this Friday. His report: “Kimi Raikkonen isn’t much of a salesman”😂

Like every recent EV launch, the starting price is lower than I expected. I thought it would break 1 million RMB, so 769,000 RMB (105,000 USD) for a quad motor EV with 1265 hp and a 0-100 km/h time of 2.02 seconds seems like a bit of a deal. For context, the Tesla S Plaid costs 828,900 RMB (113,000 USD). Hopefully we’ll get behind the wheel of the FR by the end of the year!

27/10/2023

I mentioned earlier this week that I was driving the Kia EV6 GT, now it’s time to share my thoughts. Scroll through to see pics and read the screenshots, because I wrote way too much to fit under this post haha.

25/10/2023

Picked up this Kia EV6 for a Chinese-language review the other day, and boy have I got thoughts! There won’t be a full English language review of this one, as it’s already been driven by pretty much every English-speaking media on YouTube already, but check back here for a long post where I share my thoughts on why this thing is pretty much a nonstarter here in the Chinese market.

22/10/2023

I just found this picture from the Changan Qiyuan dealership hilarious. Here we see the UNI-V iDD (aka the PHEV model) in the foreground, and an advertisement for the Qiyuan A06 in the background. They look pretty similar, right? That’s because they’re the same car with different badges. From now on, all PHEV/EV models from Changan will fall under the Qiyuan brand, while ICE models will fall under Changan/UNI (until they stop producing ICE cars around 2025). That’s all well and good, but they could have least waited till the rebadged UNI-Vs arrived before starting to advertise them right behind to the old one😂.

For the record, an ICE version of UNI-V was directly opposite this PHEV model in the dealership.

20/10/2023

The Lynk & Co 08 is one of my favorite designs from 2023, particularly that rear view mirror mount that resolves into a design element on the front quarter panel. Having an available PHEV powertrain with 436 kW and 905 Nm of torque (580 hp and 670 lb-ft) doesn’t hurt either!

19/10/2023

Headed to the recently revamped Changan dealership near our office to check out the new Qiyuan A07. My pics don’t capture it well, but it looks a bit like an ET7 for about 1/3 the price. Scroll to the last photo and tell me whether I captured the look of the logo.

17/10/2023

Is it just me, or is there something…French about the new Baojun EQ100 aka Yunduo?

13/10/2023

Nice little size comparison between the BYD Dolphin and the BYD Seagull.

13/10/2023

Hello, BJ80

12/10/2023

Spotted this 03+ Cyan sans obnoxious graphics when I was returning our test car. Gotta say, looks much better this way.

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Videos

We’re in Guangzhou to drive the XPeng X9, video coming soon!

Supposed to be filming the global debut of a certain Chevy crossover, but I can’t stop looking at these weird cat statues… #chevy #chevrolet #seeker #debut #suv #gm #sgm #generalmotors #saic

When you’re filming your “Mercedes-Benz” and a thunderstorm starts…

Alpina B4 Biturbo Micro Review

Long time no see, Wheelsboy fans! Apologies for our absence during the holidays, but we've got a little surprise for you, a Micro Review of another Wheelsboy rental car! Don't worry, it's not another boring compact SUV this time, it's much, much more interesting... Feel free to let us know if you have any questions below!

Too many Cats to choose from! #ora #oracat #oracatgt

We love running into our fans, especially when they throw us the keys to their Porsche GT3 and say, “I just change the tires, feel free to drift it!”

We at Wheelsboy remain committed to sniffing every car and giving you the honest truth about its scents. #xpeng #xpengp5

It's pronounced "volley".

The Wuling has everything you need, and nothing you don't (assuming you consider any kind of electronic stability control to be something you don't need). Check out the review on our YouTube channel to learn more!