The GWM P500 is the first full hybrid bakkie in South Africa. Picture: GWM
GWM is firing some serious shots at the established stalwarts like the Toyota Hilux and Ford Ranger with the P500 bakkie.
With its sights set on South Africa’s best-selling bakkie pair, GWM is hoping to fill some pretty big shoes and make a strong statement that it is the country’s number one Chinese vehicle brand.
We were down in the Southern Cape to see if the GWM P500 could back up the impressive resume that this double cab presents on paper.
The GWM P500 offers a combined 255kW of power and 648Nm of torque. A 180kW/380Nm 2.0-litre turbocharged petrol engine is seamlessly integrated with a 325-volt electric motor that brings 78kW and 268Nm to the power party.
This is enough to slot the GWM P500 right near the top of the performance charts, just behind the Ford Ranger Raptor, and way ahead of any of the oil burners in the form of a Toyota Hilux, Isuzu D-Max, Nissan Navara and Mitsubishi Triton.
ALSO READ: WATCH: First look at GWM’s new flagship P500 bakkie
Jumping inside the GWM P500, and I mean jump as this bakkie is also larger than anything the competition have on the market, you are greeted by a modern, well put together interior. It offers every imaginable luxury feature you could want from a head-up display, panoramic sunroof, multi-media infotainment screen, virtual instrument cluster to electrically adjustable heated and cooled seats with eight-option massage function.
It looks substantial and it feels like it too on the road. The GWM P500 bakkie is no lightweight and comes in at almost 2 600kg. This you feel when you attempt to treat it like a track car or rally car, depending if you are on tar or dirt. But with no turbo lag thanks to the electrical assistance on board and all this power and torque running down to four wheels through a nine-speed auto gearbox, what it does have, is a lot of get up and go.
But there is a downside to using all this urge however and that is fuel consumption. The claim is 9.8 litres per 100km, but we seldom saw much below 15 litres per 100km. And a best that eventually got down into the 12s after long easy-going stretches of road.
When The Citizen Motoring gets a GWM P500 on test, not only will we be able to confirm how fast this big bruiser of a bakkie is, and we think it is going to be fast, but we will also fiddle with the drive modes and see just how much we can improve the fuel consumption number for a possible better everyday figure.
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