Chinese SUV beats Lexus GX and Toyota Land Cruiser in off-road test – Jalopnik

Sometimes it can be difficult to tell how good Chinese vehicles actually are. They’re clearly better built than their fiercest opponents claim, but how well would they really compete if sold here? Is it just the EVs that are good, or are their gas cars just as desirable? The good news is that since other countries have Chinese cars, reviewers there can compare them against each other, and thanks to the power of the Internet, we can take a look at what they find. Like in this Australian off-road test, where a Chinese SUV just beat a Toyota and a Lexus.

If you don’t keep a close eye on the Australian car media, CarExpert is probably the largest car site in the country. And unlike many of the most popular American car blogs, their size means they actually have a budget to do cool stuff. You know, like bringing together a bunch of SUVs to put their off-road capabilities to the test, sometimes with unexpected results. For example, last year the Hyundai Tucson won their off-road comparison test of compact crossovers, something I’m not even sure the Hyundai fanboys predicted.

This time, however, they were testing three-row SUVs, and based on the setup alone, it would seem like the deck was heavily stacked in Toyota’s favor. With the Lexus LX and GX, plus the Prado that Toyota USA is now calling the Land Cruiser here and the J300 Land Cruiser that we’re not getting, how can a Toyota product not win? Oh, that’s right, reliability wasn’t a factor, so the Land Rover Defender won, but several Toyotas also had a harder time than you’d expect.

The two that didn’t do so well were the Lexus GX and the J300 Land Cruiser. They did great in the other tests, but their all-wheel drive just couldn’t handle the rolls. What’s perhaps more surprising is that the GWM Tank, a Chinese SUV, passed the same rolling test that proved too much for the Toyota and the Lexus, while matching their performance in the other tests, ultimately scoring better on both. I can’t say what that test would look like after 100,000 miles, but it’s still fascinating to see a Chinese SUV outperform two of the biggest names in off-road SUVs.

That said, there’s more to off-road riding than what you can quantify with a few tests, and it’s worth noting that if you look at the host’s personal score, the GWM Tank sits at the bottom of the pack, along with the KGM Rexton. The job may have been done, but they had traction control issues that were frustrating enough for Paul to even rank it lower than the Ford Everest, which finished bottom of the rankings, mainly due to the problems it had climbing the slippery hill. Even if the Tank is a capable off-roader, if it were my money I’d probably still stick with Toyota.