The biggest brand you’ve possibly never heard of joins the Autocar fleet
There's a very good reason why we conduct more than one type of testing here at Autocar. Spend just a few days with a new car and it can be all too easy to focus on the negatives, whereas with a sustained period together it can work its way under your skin - and that's just what has happened with the BYD.
The thing is, working around most of the above became second nature fairly quickly, and if you can look past the frustrations, there is an awful lot to like about this deceptive car. Deceptive because what looks like an innocuous and relatively compact SUV on the outside is in fact remarkably spacious, particularly in the rear, making it an ideal family wagon .
Around town and on shorter journeys, 200-plus miles was perfectly possible - more if you are a bit less enthusiastic with the heated seats and the air-con - and it was only fast motorway runs that really sapped the Atto 3's energy. With all that in mind, I was a little concerned about how the Atto 3 was going to work out in daily life, given its published capacities of 440 litres of boot space, rising to 550 litres when filling to the roof and 1338 litres with the rear seats folded.
And you’ll need to remember those seatbelts when putting it back to passenger spec, too, because they are all too easy to trap in the mechanism. But once you’ve folded them, you can fit a pretty decent amount in there – with a near-flat load bay for larger items if you have the floor raised, or dropped for extra space .
It made me yearn for times when cars were less complicated – although I won’t go as far as my mate Martin, who has built himself an Austin Seven Special that provides the perfect juxtaposition to the BYD’s sophistication.With headlights being about the extent of his Austin’s electrical system, he won’t be suffering the frustrations I have of late. The Atto 3’s built-in nav still doesn’t work, which isn’t a great loss because I can use Apple CarPlay, but of more concern are a few recent glitches.
Despite these niggles, the BYD is a very pleasant car to live with. More loungewear than race suit, for sure, but there are plenty of times when I know which I would rather be wearing. Surely there are few cars this bland that attract so much attention. You just don’t see BYDs on the road. But that won’t last...
More than one visitor to my house has asked if that’s a new Kia in my driveway, but the important thing is that the overall result is inoffensive and even bordering on the really quite handsome.Design example wants for nothing for a shade less than £40,000, offering the kind of generosity that would shame many a luxury car at twice its price. I’m talking electric panoramic roof, bird’s-eye cameras all round – the works.
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