GWM Tank 300 after 2 Years of Ownership in Russian Winter!

How is Tank 300 holding up against Russian winter after two years of ownership and 36 000 kilometers on the clock? Welcome back to the channel everyone. I haven't spoken about Tank 300 for a while and haven't translated anything from my favorite childhood memory of an automotive magazine called Zarulyom. So today is that day. We are translating another video from them, promoting their content, making it accessible to English-speaking audiences. They have ownership of this vehicle for the last half a year. Otherwise I imagine it was privately owned, this vehicle. It's over two years old and it is going through Russian winters. It's on road all the time. It's in use by, I imagine, himself and his team. Before we continue, I would like to introduce another wonderful sponsor of this channel, as well as this particular video. So we're talking about a company called TAFON. TAFON is a company that produces portable power banks and chargers. So I'm reviewing all these wonderful devices on Autogear Reviews, which once again, if you have been living under a rock, it's a spin-off channel of this one, where I talk specifically about gear. We have at least two products right now in review. So thank you very much TAFON for sponsoring this video. Jumping to the first point that our host brings to our attention. The Tank 300 apparently sucks in all the dirt, dust, snow and everything in between like nobody's business. It's a vehicle on a frame where the body is detached from that frame, leaving a lot of quite obvious and visible gaps and spaces between the panels. Probably like no other vehicle, honestly. Maybe Jeep Wrangler, but that's a different story altogether. All of that helps with modularity of Tank 300's construction, most obvious element of which are those plastic fenders that you can very easily replace if you hit something while off-roading. And it's great. It serves the purpose of Tank 300 design. Active lifestyle and very heavy off-roading. What is not fantastic is just how dirty apparently it gets and how hard it is to clean properly. Obviously, if you live in clean Sydney and only stay on the road, never seeing winter, snow or any off-road really, this would be beside the point for you. No concern. But for everyone else, our host mentions that during their winters, all windows, side mirrors become extremely, extremely dirty. And to clean all of that sucked in dirt out is no small feat really. Another actually major problem apparently is the windshield. It's smallish, which somewhat protects it from extra debris and stones, but it's placed almost vertically. And any small stones, gravel, other kind of stuff, it just simply wouldn't ricochet off it on a highway with any half-decent speed. So the stone chips and cracks that are caused by that impact are actually a lot more common on Tank 300 than any other vehicle other than once again perhaps Jeep Wrangler, but we don't have the data to prove or disprove that point. Replacing the windscreen is a costly exercise. Of course, you probably have it included in your car insurance policy, but you still pay to get it replaced for your excess fee. Opening the bonnet takes two pulls of a lever inside. There are apparently two bonnet locks that also have sensors detecting if the bonnet is open. So they had only one real problem here with this vehicle, and that was the problem with one of those locks. It showed itself as an intermittent and kind of hard to identify issue, where at first the alarm went off in the middle of the night for no reason. So diagnostic really took ages for them, but eventually they isolated the issue and had to replace the lock. That's the only thing that helped solve it. The 2-liter turbo petrol engine pumps out 220 horsepower, caused no issues, zero over these two years and 36 000 kilometers. Oil consumption is normal, it doesn't suck oil, nothing was leaking or needing attention other than adding antifreeze liquid for winter use, but I'm not going to repeat it again. Winters are not our problem. The boot of Tank 300 gets criticized left and right, or at least is mentioned by a lot of reviewers, including us here, so this point is to be expected. It's small, quite obvious, we know that, and even the tailgate is not very convenient actually in day-to-day use, especially if you have this car for family use, as opposed to as a toy for off-roading, because of how massive and heavy it is. Just to throw in a few groceries bags, it's almost always not worth the trouble of swinging that tailgate open, provided there is even space behind your vehicle, there might not even be space where you parked. So many owners, including our host here, just simply say that they throw the luggage on the rear seats, so that's something for you to keep in mind. There is no boot shelf either, that could help cover anything valuable that you don't necessarily want to be seen by the passers-by or extra curious people with prying eyes. Also the finishes of the side walls of the boot and the floor are made of this kind of felt, I suppose, like material, you tell me what the right way of calling it is, that material, and there is apparently a debate among the owners of 4x4s what's worse for an off-roader, boot lining, this felt-like material, or plastic. Felt gets dirty very very easily and hard to clean, and plastic scratches eventually. Quick mention of the ease to fit a towing hook is made if you have a boat trailer or something else, I don't know what else it would be. Obviously the feature is very convenient when it is part of vehicle's original design, as opposed to an afterthought, because wiring is there, the plug is already there, you just need to expose the already predetermined hole and fit that aftermarket little hook or whatever, rather than having to do some more invasive aftermarket surgery, I would almost call it. Now here he might sound a bit picky to some viewers, but he talks about how sometimes hard it would be getting used to getting into the vehicle, climbing into it. It's obviously tall, so there are no surprises that some climbing skills might be required when you buy one of these Tank 300s, but it also kind of goes towards describing how the handle, that side handle on the A-pillar and the step don't necessarily help sometimes people with a certain frame. He's actually quite tall, our host here, he's about 190 centimeters tall, I suppose when you're shorter you would have even bigger problems. I don't know, I'm with you if you honestly on this point you like roll your eyes and think that he's being pedantic and nitpicky, so do I, but I'm trying to do a good job translating exactly what they said. Steering wheel is great, round, placement of pedals also helps you drive comfortably, apparently some off-roading conditions, some people choose to use a method of driving where even an automatic transmission vehicle, they use both feet to control both pedals a lot more, a lot better than kind of one foot that you switch between the two pedals as we normally drive 99.9% of the time. So he says the simply placement of those pedals allows for that alternative way of off-roading, which I suppose is good, I guess it is good. Interior organization of this vehicle is great, nothing is designed too awkwardly, other than a couple of points we'll mention in a second, and these points are kind of no spare space to put your wallet or a phone or what you have into an already expected space that usually is in that niche of the central tunnel of GWM vehicles, such as Haval, I had one, such as Jolyon, such as H6 and other models. So in this particular case, once again, a nice phone holder of sorts that you put into your vent would actually work quite nicely, and again, I sort of walked into this cross-promotion of our lovely friend Tafon in this particular case, where you could actually and probably will have to invest into having one of those extra places where you would like to put your phone or your partner would like to put their phone as well, right? Even if you found a place for one phone, maybe you need another one, who knows, who knows. All right, another horrible thing in my humble opinion, and I was kind of giggling here when our host mentioned it as well, unprompted obviously by me, is the design of the cup holders. Cup holders are really sunken in, GWM needs to fix it as a priority for the next generation of this vehicle 100%, because while a thin tall bottle or some kind of other very tall cup would fit there fine, but a normal coffee cup, takeaway coffee cup, or something similar would sink right in, and you would struggle digging it out. I really do not understand what Great Wall Motors was thinking there. It stood out to me first second I personally sat in Tank 300, and now two years later people across the world in Russia are pointing out the same thing to us. 360 degree cameras are working actually up to 30 kilometers per hour speeds in Tank 300, which might not seem like a feature, but it actually is quite important and helps with parking, helps with harder work conditions where you slow down, but you still would love to see better around yourself, because typically those 360 degree cameras turn off at about 15, maybe 20 kilometers an hour as soon as the vehicle starts moving. So having them still on up to 30 actually helps a lot. Apparently the quality of built-in Bluetooth phone connection and sound is unbearable after 60, 70 kilometers an hour speed is gained, because I guess sound interference is too high, maybe the placement of the microphone somewhere there in the innards of the body of the vehicle starts resonating there on the bumps, who knows exactly, but our host says that it's very very hard to hear the hear people on like in that built-in kind of microphone connection. Like talk to me in the comments down below again, especially if you experience some kind of high speed driving on not particularly amazing roads, that would be interesting. Can you validate this? Can you challenge this point? I would love to hear from you. On the road Tank 300 was reviewed and compared with many vehicles already, so we won't spend too much time on this, but he only reconfirms here for us that it's a pleasure to drive Tank 300 on the road. Its steering is precise, predictable, comparable with much lighter crossover SUVs that are nowhere as heavy, have independent suspension and couldn't even be fairly to be honestly compared against. But the point that he's making is that Tank 300 feels on the road much more pleasantly than for example a Toyota Prado would feel. 220 horsepower, 2 liter turbo petrol engine was already mentioned, so accompanied by 8-speed automatic transmission. It's a great combination and enough power and kind of just gaining the, I suppose, the gears and stuff, speed to feel dynamic and not sluggish in traffic, overtaking easily and basically in any conditions, not having any issues, which once again is amazing to hear. It's not news, we've heard this before, but isn't good news. Repeated good news a good thing, I think it's a good thing. He also briefly mentions that average fuel consumption between city and highway is hovering for him around 13.5 liters per 100 kilometers and he is sort of alluding to this being quite high, while people in the comments, actually original comments, disagreed saying that this is more than fair, which I absolutely and completely agree, even if I had to compare seeing average numbers of about 10 liters per 100 kilometers for my Subaru Outback. Yes, it's a large-ish wagon, but nowhere near as heavy, as large or as square as Tank 300. Type of transmission is mentioned here as our host shares his impressions comparing part-time with constant 4x4 Tank 300 variants. They have multiple ones and unsurprisingly, referring to Russian winter of course, conditions where part-time simply doesn't cut it. It just doesn't save you much fuel, it still makes you feel very unsteady on the slippery roads compared to full-time 4x4. There is simply no reason, other than maybe saving a couple of grand, probably insignificant to be a part-time. So he basically does not recommend buying part-time variants of Tank 300 under any circumstances really. Suspension and the whole drivetrain parts are very, very solid, spoken about for a little bit of time. I just don't want to repeat this content. We've disassembled Tank 300. We spoke about this. My channel is there for you to explore that content if you're new to it. So movement is allowed enough by the suspension, proving that Tank 300 was definitely made to last and as a vehicle to be beaten up really on bad roads and whatever else the owner throws at it. Our host also mentions that the brake pedal actually has a lot of go built into it, meaning that at first you might feel like you need to put quite a bit more pressure and put your foot further down in order to make Tank 300 respond properly and brake properly and stop. But that is just an adjustment phase, plus obviously more confronting for those who have never driven heavy 4x4s on a frame and compare those to a city car, which is entirely unfair. They need to wake up those people. Solid rear axle obviously shakes on the bumps, on some of the bumps, and can't be again fairly compared in terms of comfort of the ride in a car that has independent rear suspension. Tank 300 simply doesn't have it. Body of the vehicle already was discussed plenty of times. It's designed very well, super modular with a lot of replaceable and almost independent elements, which makes it even more so off-road and beat-up capable. Apparently Great Wall Motors confirmed that their plans are to produce Tank 300 model and export it to different parts of the world for the next 15 years at least, which is amazing and reassuring. And there are a lot of owners already on the territory of Russia and everywhere else in the world who absolutely swear by this model and we sort of see why, right? As another data point here that he is sharing with us is that after two years of availability on the territory of Russia, Great Wall Motors sold 25,000 Tank 300 units across Russia, which I'm sure you would agree is a very, very impressive number considering that it's not the only vehicle for sale there, and how expensive it is as well, and how many other competing vehicles including Chinese, crossovers and other very attractive vehicles they have over there on their market. They have a much richer automotive market than Australia could ever dream of, my friends. So something for us to contemplate and keep in mind when drawing our own conclusions to buy or not to buy. And there you go my friends, did you enjoy this video? I hope you did, I hope you found bits and pieces of information that we have not covered in the past or I have not translated from some other channels either. Let me know if your personal ownership of Tank 300 is going according to plan, how long you've had yours for, and most importantly, do you regularly experience tougher, muddier, off-roady or farm, perhaps, weather conditions on your Tank 300? How do you find the whole management of mud? How do you find any other modules? Specifically, I'm very curious about coffee cup holders that I am just raging about whenever I can. Who would have thought about such a dumb decision? And I'll talk to you next week about something else value-cas related in Australia and beyond. Bye for now.