The Jetour X70 Plus makes a strong first impression. It has the sharp styling, imposing grille and richly presented cabin of an SUV that wants to feel considerably more expensive than it is. It also offers seven seats at a price that puts it within reach of families who might otherwise be shopping for a smaller five-seater.
But after spending a week with it, I kept coming back to one question: does the driving experience live up to the way this vehicle looks and feels?
The answer is more complicated than its attractive price and generous equipment list suggest.
Which car this is: the refreshed X70 Plus that Jetour South Africa introduced in July 2026, with the 125 kW / 270 Nm 1.5-litre turbo and seven-speed dual-clutch transmission, a redesigned grille and 19-inch wheels. The earlier 115 kW six-speed car it replaced is not the one we drove.
Pricing: a lot of SUV for the money
The refreshed range is two derivatives: the Prestige at R444 900 and the Prime at R494 900. Both use the same engine and gearbox; the Prime adds the panoramic glass roof, dual-zone climate control, side curtain airbags and the blind-spot and cross-traffic alerts. Our test car was the Prime.
That pricing is central to the X70 Plus’s appeal. You’re getting the presence of a substantial SUV, an interior designed to feel premium and the flexibility of a third seating row. It looks like an appealing proposition before you’ve even started the engine.
Exterior: this is where the Jetour gets your attention
I really like the styling of this vehicle. The upright grille, slim headlights, pronounced body lines and large wheels give it a confident appearance. The rear is equally distinctive, with its full-width light treatment and quad-exhaust-style finish.
There’s a sense that someone spent time considering how all these elements should work together. It doesn’t look like a budget-conscious seven-seater trying to disguise its size.
The design is one of the strongest reasons to give the X70 Plus a closer look.
Interior: impressive presentation, less impressive interaction
Open the door and the X70 Plus continues its premium pitch. The cabin has a polished appearance, with glossy trim, metallic-looking details, an attractive steering wheel and a dashboard layout that draws obvious inspiration from German luxury cars — Mercedes-Benz in particular. That’s a styling observation, not a claim that the components come from Mercedes-Benz.
The seats were comfortable during our week with the car, and the second row offered enough room to make the X70 Plus feel like a useful family vehicle. There are plenty of features to explore, and the cabin initially feels more expensive than the price suggests.
The frustration starts when you actually have to use some of those features.
Jetour fits two 10.25-inch displays, one for the instruments and one for infotainment. So the screen isn’t especially small on paper, but its presentation and usability left me wanting more. Moving through menus wasn’t particularly enjoyable, and the touchscreen sometimes failed to respond as expected.
Bluetooth pairing was generally fine. Apple CarPlay was less consistent: connecting sometimes involved extra steps, and on occasion it simply didn’t connect. The physical home shortcut and volume control were welcome, but I would have liked a straightforward physical shortcut for Sport mode rather than having to work through the interface.
These weren’t isolated first-impression complaints. They were the kinds of small irritations that became more noticeable while living with the car.
Seven seats — but understand what that means
The X70 Plus is a seven-seater in the sense that it has three seating rows. It is not a vehicle I’d describe as comfortable for seven adults.
I’m about 1.85 m tall, and I couldn’t fit comfortably in the third row. For me, those rearmost seats are best regarded as occasional seating for children. The middle row is a much better place to spend time.
With all seven seats upright, luggage space is very limited. Fold the rear seats and it grows to 1 680 litres, but the maximum figure says little about what you can carry when every seat is occupied.
For a family that occasionally needs to transport extra children, the layout makes sense. For someone who regularly travels with seven people and their luggage, the compromise is much harder to ignore.
Engine and performance: the biggest weakness of our test car
On paper, 125 kW and 270 Nm — up from 115 kW and 230 Nm in the car this one replaced — sound reasonable for a seven-seater of this size. In everyday driving, however, the 1.5-litre turbo engine and its seven-speed dual-clutch transmission were the biggest disappointments of our week.
There was substantial hesitation when asking the car to accelerate. I spent most of my time in Sport mode because the response in normal driving didn’t give me the immediacy I wanted. Even then, the engine could feel reluctant before the power arrived.
Once the turbo came on boost and the vehicle was moving, it could pick up its pace and feel reasonably responsive for short bursts. But that responsiveness wasn’t consistent. Accelerating from around 60 to 120 km/h demanded more patience than I expected, particularly when asking for a sustained increase in speed.
I wouldn’t attribute every delay to turbo lag alone: the engine’s available power, the transmission’s response and the vehicle’s size can all contribute to what the driver feels. What I can say confidently is that our test car often felt short of effortless acceleration.
It’s worth saying plainly that this is the updated engine. The extra 10 kW and 40 Nm over the previous X70 Plus are real, and the seven-speed gearbox is new, but neither changed the character we’re describing: the delay is in how the car responds to the pedal, not in how much power it eventually has.
Ride, steering and stability
The X70 Plus wasn’t as settled on the road as I had hoped. The suspension didn’t consistently deliver the composure its comfortable-looking cabin suggested, and the steering didn’t feel especially intuitive to me.
On a particularly windy day, I could feel the vehicle being pushed around. That was noticeable enough to affect my confidence in how settled it felt, although one windy drive isn’t a controlled test of its crosswind behaviour.
I also found the driving position relatively low for an SUV of this size. That may suit some drivers, but it wasn’t quite the commanding position I expected from the exterior.
The overall impression was of a vehicle that prioritises visual appeal and cabin comfort more successfully than steering feel and ride composure.
Fuel consumption: reasonable during our week, but not a definitive test
We had the X70 Plus for about a week and used it for ordinary day-to-day driving rather than a major road trip.
Fuel consumption seemed acceptable in that setting, but I didn’t record a controlled, tank-to-tank result, so I’m not publishing a real-world average. The figure quoted for this derivative is 6.9 L/100 km — a published figure, not our achieved consumption.
The fact that I drove predominantly in Sport mode is also relevant when considering how representative our fuel use would be for another owner.
The SUVs verdict in full
The Jetour X70 Plus is easy to appreciate when you first walk up to it. I like its sharp design, its substantial road presence and the effort that has gone into making the cabin feel special. The second row is spacious, the seats are comfortable, and having a third row available adds flexibility.
But a week of everyday driving revealed compromises that aren’t obvious in the showroom.
The infotainment system frustrated me, the third row was too small for an adult of my height, and the 1.5-litre engine — even in its updated 125 kW form — struggled to deliver the easy, consistent performance I wanted. Its response improved once it was moving, but I shouldn’t have to rely on Sport mode throughout the week just to make the car feel sufficiently alert.
The X70 Plus offers an impressive-looking package for its price. Whether it’s the right seven-seater for you depends on how much you value its design and equipment — and how comfortable you are with the driving compromises of this particular powertrain.
This is the car Jetour sells today, and this verdict belongs to it.
The full photo set
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