FLOP, SKIP AND A JUMP

Adequate for its suited purpose of urban journeys (though not much else), the Leapmotor T03’s flimsy feel and lack of safety rating require a leap of faith, writes Sean O’Grady

- Sean O'Grady

It was a great vaudeville comedian of more than a century ago, Will Rogers, who famously said: “I never met a man I didn’t like.” Indeed, he intended it as his own epitaph, and reportedly said he was so pleased with it he couldn’t wait to die to see it carved on his headstone, so to speak. Well, I wouldn’t go as far as that, but I’m happy to say that I never met a car I didn’t like because I, too, always try to look for the best in even the most unpromising of designs. That, by the way, may account for my first car, a fragile rear-engined Skoda of the old school. It had few redeeming features, but one was that I could always pass it off as a Saab to people who didn’t know much about cars; plus, sometimes it worked.

The Leapmotor T03 would have tested the good nature of even the late Mr Rogers. It was not a car I could bring myself to like. It is cheap, which is “a good thing”, but it’s simply too compromised to justify considering it as a new car purchase. Its principal rival, the Dacia Spring, another Chinese-produced pure-electric vehicle, is, from my limited acquaintance, actually better than the To3, being more what we’ve a right to expect in a modern car; in any case, the Leapmotor model rules itself out on its own demerits.