Ssangyong Tivoli XLV car review – ‘It’s the car Walter White would have driven’

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This article titled “Ssangyong Tivoli XLV car review – ‘It’s the car Walter White would have driven’” was written by Zoe Williams, for The Guardian on Saturday 10th June 2017 10.00 UTC

My abiding feeling about the Ssangyong Tivoli XLV is that it’s trying to convey quite a lot – dependability, maturity, affluence – at quite a low price. It’s the car Breaking Bad’s Walter White would have driven if he hadn’t got cancer and swapped teaching chemistry for cooking crystal meth. There are design niggles that come from trying to do a bit too much, the way a multitasker never quite finishes anything. The seatbelt alarm comes on with the engine, which makes you feel harassed just for getting in. There are two mysterious gaps in the boot floor, so stuff rolls underneath it and nestles around the spare wheel. I spent the whole week thinking, “I’m sure I had more onions”, until I finally lost two bottles of wine and investigated properly. The sound system is a bit tinny, while the cabin is alive with stitching and high contrasts, but feels as if you might flick something open and find it’s held together with gaffer tape.

But once you had reconciled yourself to the interior, I think you’d become quite fond of it. The cabin is visually busy, but pulls off a rare combination, being intuitive yet novel; I think all European cars are secretly gunning to be like the VW, only more exciting. They didn’t get that memo in South Korea, and the result is ergonomic and distinctive.

Diesels have taken on untouchable status; air pollution has, presumably temporarily, taken over from climate change as the hot-button issue, so fuel efficiency is no defence against nitrogen oxide output. Plus, they have a downside shared by big dogs: they take ages to get up speed and, once they do, are surprisingly hard to stop. My charitable side thinks all cars have a perfect road, only sometimes you never find it. This isn’t a great city drive, always a few inches bigger than the space through which you’re trying to squidge it. It doesn’t fare brilliantly on country roads, either: every bump shudders through you as if your enemy put it there on purpose. It’s thundering at modest motorway speeds, whiny at higher ones and doesn’t go very fast. It may come into its own in treacherous conditions, when you’d appreciate a four-wheel drive, but it’s a sorry car that has to wait for an ice catastrophe before you’d fall in love with it.

And yet… it’s an SUV, and if you were a chemistry teacher in the final quadrant of your disappointing worklife you wouldn’t want a family hatchback. No, siree. You’d want something with a bit of muscle. Failing that, you would want a Tivoli.

Ssangyong Tivoli XLV: in numbers

Price £19,500
Top speed 108mph
Acceleration 0-62mph in 12 seconds
Combined fuel consumption 57.6mpg
CO₂ emissions 127g/km
Cool rating 5/10
Eco rating 7/10

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