GAC Emzoom Luxury 2026 review

The GAC Emzoom Luxury embodies cheap motoring offered in Australia in 2026: adventurous style, a swag of features and nice pricing, offset by only moderate competency, unresolved execution, questionable quality and strange design choices. 

Spoiler alert: you get what you pay for. 

But, as the critically unloved Chery Tiggo 4 – entering 2026 as one of Australia’s most popular buys – has spectacularly proven, Aussies will Hoover up motoring mediocrity if the price is right. 

The sole Luxury variant of the Emzoom enters the fray at $25,590 list, or around $28K on road in Galaxy Lilac paint ($600) as tested here. 

While GAC Australia claims to be spruiking quality and value over “chasing price”, its cheapest model plays against middling grades of key rivals in Tiggo 4 Ultimate ($26,990 D/A), Haval Jolion Lux ($27,990) and MG ZS Vibe Turbo ($25,990). 

The value pitch stacks up reasonably well on paper, starting with the powertrain. It offers 125kW and a healthy 270Nm from its turbocharged 1.5 litres – no barrel-bottom natural aspiration here. And it’s paired with a seven-speed dual-clutch auto rather than a cost-bucking CVT.

LED lighting, 18-inch alloys, powered mirrors and tailgate, and flush door handles anchor the GAC seduction outside, plus a huge power-opening panoramic glass roof that mainstream marques might otherwise justify heady pricing in flagship models. The lengthy equipment list is a real boon for Emzoom’s $26K ask.

Inside, features include large 14.6-inch touchscreen media with wireless phone mirroring, 7.0-inch driver’s display, inductive phone charging, 360-degree camera system, six-speaker audio, a powered driver’s seat and space-saver spare.

Plus, there’s blind spot camera system (ala Hyundai), if with some unorthodox execution (see below). 

It’s a piled stack that makes for plenty of showroom appeal, one wrapped in the sweetener of a seven-year warranty. It’s just that, once you leave the dealership, the live-in experience is more than a little mixed.

How does the Emzoom Luxury drive?

The powertrain is woeful. And right here, we’re off to a bad start, both figuratively and literally. 

An urgent throttle take-up makes Emzoom unnecessarily urgent off the mark. But the clutch engagement of the gearbox is so recalcitrant that even leisurely launches in Comfort mode leave the engine buzzing around 4000rpm before taking second.

The Emzoom is a frustrating car to drive smoothly around town and requires unreasonable effort to do so. Opting for Sport mode merely heightens urgency, if rounding out the upshifts to some degree. 

Its low-speed grumpiness is compounded changing directions during three-point turns. The vehicle exhibited alarming ‘creep’ thanks to its lazy clutch actuation, with the tendency to free-roll in a downhill direction. Yikes. 

The engine’s appetite for revs reflects in consumption: its “class-leading” 6.6L/100km claim converts to 6.7L on highway, well into the nines around town. 

This is all a shame because the rest of the on-road experience is pretty good. The steering feel is aloof, though the Emzoom points well with quite linear accuracy. 

The ride and handling balance, too, is nicely balanced, the suspension soaking up low-speed bumps well and settling comfortably out on the open road. Nor does its Sentury Qirin 990 rubber fall terribly short when it comes to lateral grip.   

It’s often tricky to assess whether a vehicle’s safety systems are well calibrated or non-functional, as silence is golden either way. Whatever the case, the Emzoom is vastly more pleasant as a turnkey device than many rivals because it doesn’t strongarm safety alerts. 

On test, the only system to regularly trigger was the lane departure warning smarts, and on evidence always in circumstances when it was warranted. There’s no need to turn anything ‘off’ prior to each trip.

How is the Emzoom Luxury’s interior?

First impressions are vastly more positive with the GAC’s interior: a sense of celebration, little overt cost consciousness, and a load of conspicuous tech. It presents well.

The Emzoom feels solidly put together and, impressively, much of the interior is coated in quite tactile soft-touch finishes, not just on the arm rests but also across the door card tops and the dash top and fascia. The sporty multifunctional wheel is quite delightful. 

The front seats are heavily sculpted with loads of adjustment, and the satin vinyl trim (with perforations) is comfy while avoiding heat sink or stickiness. 

Ergonomics are decent, with a straightforward and quite conventional cabin design smart enough to include old-school conveniences such as HVAC control not (all) buried in the touchscreen.

At 14.6 inches, the media screen is huge and a bit of a mixed bag. Wireless Apple CarPlay was quick to sync and stable in connection, supported by a 50-watt inductive charge pad. Sadly, the audio system’s woefully tinny sound quality does match the look of the premium speaker grilles. 

Then there are cameras: lots of them. Multi-angle 360-degree viewing has parking covered – a good inclusion for this price point – though the Blind Spot View (aka, digital wing mirror) system is, frankly, more an annoyance than a benefit. 

This beams your wing mirror ‘views’ digitally through the central touchscreen, jumbo sized, once you’ve activated the indicator. Works fine for the left mirror (as you naturally look left anyway) but it’s downright odd glancing left to view the right side of the car. Get used to it? Maybe… 

There’s more. Annoyingly, Blind Spot View remains activated at a traffic light standstill: those moments when a driver tends to want to meddle with media, air-con, sat-nav, and such. You’re constantly turning it off as, sadly, it can’t be permanently switched off in settings.

Other areas are less clumsy design and more quality control issues: such as the panoramic glass roof scrim that opened first time but then refused to shut. Or the demister system that couldn’t nip mist in the bud after 15 minutes of hard running. 

On a more positive side, the Emzoom is surprisingly roomy in row two, with impressive knee, head and toe room. 

The rear bench is comfier than the front buckets (which lack lumbar adjustment) but it’s otherwise basic accom: a single airvent, a sole USB-A outlet (A and C types are fitted up front), and cupholders in the folddown armrest. 

The nice inclusion of a powered tailgate lifts to reveal an adequate 341 litres (convertible to 1271L with the rears folded) and you get a space saver spare wheel under the boot floor.

The honest verdict

The Emzoom is a fundamentally decent car suffering painfully from a wayward and frustrated powertrain. There’s less room for improvement needed from much of the rest of the driving experience. 

As reported prior, Emzoom’s late 2025 launch just slipped its Euro 5-rated powertrain into local sale before Euro 6d-aligned regulations (ADR 79-05) became mandated. As is, the small SUV’s 1.5L DCT combination gets a stay of execution (until July 2028 under current ADR timeline).

The thing is, regardless of its ADR compliance, the Emzoom is eminently less driveable than many of its key rivals right now. Be it thorough recalibration of what it’s got, or perhaps a hybrid alternative not currently offered, it needs something.

This alone makes GAC’s cheapest offering tough to recommend, regardless of a price that’s hugely more affordable than the circa-$40K hybrid alternatives including Toyota’s Corolla Cross.