Confident and comfortable

The Chinese-built Tank 300 is quite at home battling Australia’s highways, byways and bush track.

Story Bruce McMahon 

The Tank 300 5-seat wagon from Great Wall Motors is a body-on-frame 4WD with – despite the name – a decent amount of comfort and competence at a fair price. It looks the part, drives the part when pointed into rough-tough country, yet remains civilised enough for town and country touring and family outings.

Good on-road manners (once the overreactive lane-keeping monitor is switched off) are complemented offroad by a suite of 4WD modes, 2-speed transfer case, a front bash plate and differential locks. It is a proper 4WD, although it may need more aggressive tyres for those alloy wheels (and perhaps a little body lift) to further enhance the wagon’s off-road abilities.

The Tank’s square-cornered 4WD body style is similar to the 4-door Jeep Wrangler. It’s practical, with good sight lines and smallish overhangs, and quite tidy, with a minimal amount of ornamentation. There’s more chrome inside than out.

Up front, there’s decent room for 2, and plenty of head and leg room for 2 full-sized adults in the rear, although 3 adults might be tight on shoulder room. There’s good cargo space, thanks in part to the full-sized spare mounted on the rear door (which opens toward the road).

The 4 versions of the 4.7m-long Tank 300 start with the Lux model and then the Ultra runs with a tad more gear, such as a front differential lock to pair with the rear and 18-inch wheels. Both Lux and Ultra are available with either 2L petrol engine or a turbocharged, 2L petrol-electric hybrid powerplant.

GWM reckons the petrol-only Tank, running 162kW through a pretty smooth 8-speed automatic transmission, should return 9.5L/100km. It’s more likely to be closer to 12L/100km with a mixed bag of town, highway and bush work, but it’s happy with regular 91 RON fuel. Towing capacity is 2500kg.

Around town, the Tank’s stop-start can be a touch sluggish, and on the open road there’s a little wind noise around the mirrors, yet for the most, this is a quiet and refined wagon, with a responsive power train. There are paddle shifters for manual changes – always handy for off-road work. At highway speeds, or locked into low-range 4WD for steady rock climbs, there’s little complaint about gearing.

The Tank’s bulk and ride height – there’s 224mm of ground clearance – will see the nose run wide if pushed too hard into tight turns and brakes need an adult-weighted shove on the pedal. But overall handling manners are impressive, up there with rivals such as Isuzu’s MU-X wagon. Whether running down the motorway or a bush track, the wagon’s ride is firm and controlled, the steering direct and responsive.

There are few complaints about the level of standard gear across the range, from LED headlights and tail-lights to a 9-speaker sound system, 31cm infotainment touch screen, sunroof and side steps. These complement a swag of driver aids, including forward collision warning and autonomous emergency braking, adaptive cruise control and traffic sign recognition. It’s a value-packed cabin and plaudits for the likes of a tyre pressure monitor, all-terrain mode selector (which adapts engine and transmission responses to different surfaces), and cameras up front for low-speed work.

Controls are generally neat, tidy and easily understood in a cabin with a premium feel (if a tad chintzy in part, with splashes of chrome and decorative lines of LED lights changing colour across the trim). The instrumentation is a bit too 21st century, with digital readouts for both road and engine speed; the graphics are more suited to a new-age battery electric vehicle perhaps, and not quite in tune with the retro-style body and rest of the cabin’s more traditional touches (including a smart analogue clock in the centre of the dashboard).

But these are minor whinges about what is a well-sorted and value-weighted 4WD – a confident and comfortable touring wagon backed by a 7-year warranty and 7-year roadside assistance. Great Wall Motors’ Haval-branded SUV wagons and Cannon utes have already made their mark on the Australian market. The Tank 300, now joined by the 7-seater Tank 500, is arguably the best of GWM’s ranks to date.