Here we have a Chery Tiggo SUV, an early one, seen in the cold winter of 2019 in the south of the Chinese capital Beijing, parked near a small canal that runs to the Temple of Heaven. The Tiggo looked heavenly indeed, it was in perfect shape, with flawless paint, factory stickers, and with the original seven-spoke alloy wheels.
The original Chery Tiggo debuted in 2005. In 2007, the Tiggo received its first facelift, and that is the car we have here today. In 2014, after another 3 (!) facelifts, the Chery Tiggo was renamed to Chery Tiggo 3. And that car, after loads of facelifts, continued until 2022! That is an impressive production run of 17 long years.
NCV stands for New Concept Vehicle, the official nickname of the original Chery Tiggo. The stickers were quite wild, with a tiger seemingly attacking the ‘V’. I lived in China when the Tiggo was launched. At the time, it was hailed as a revolutionary vehicle. And it was. The Chery Tiggo was the first mass-produced mass-market compact SUV made by a Chinese car brand, and it was a huge sales success for Chery.
The interior looks just as good as the exterior. Check the center stack, it looks like new, with an audio unit with a CD player. The owner added seat covers and a thick steering wheel cover. This kind of steering wheel cover were usually fitted for the winter, back when it was regularly -20 degrees in Beijing from December to February. These days, thanks to climate change, it isn’t that cold in the Beijing winter anymore. And on top of that, most cars have heated steering wheels nowadays.
The seat covers look very neat, and I like the colors, brown and beige, matching nicely with the interior trim.
The Chery Tiggo was available with three four-cylinder petrol engines: 1.6, 1.8, and 2.0. The car we have here is the 2.0, with an output of 139 hp for a 170 km/h top speed. The motor was mated to a five-speed manual or, like in this car, a five-speed automatic gearbox.
Note the SQR7206T sticker. That is the full designation of this generation Tiggo with the 2.0 engine. Until the early 2000s, it was obligatory by law to have these designations on every car. Each car brand has its abbreviation. ‘SQR’ is for Chery.
Characters: 奇瑞汽车, Qirui Qiche, Chery Auto.
The original Chery Tiggo was all over Beijing until late into the 2010s. After that, these early Chinese SUVs became quite rare. Well, the black one survived perfectly, let’s hope it is still around somewhere in China today.