International Motors, UK importer of Subaru, Isuzu, once Mitsubishi and now Chinese newcomer Ora, has a bit of a job on its hands with the new Ora Funky Cat, the first examples of which it is preparing to deliver to customers in a matter of weeks.
It’s not because this is a new brand in the market – look at how Polestar, DS and Genesis are getting on – and nor is it because of securing supply from Ora parent company Great Wall’s Jiangsu factory (it has production through the first half of 2023). But rather more simply, it’s because it’s quite a bit bigger than it looks in pictures.
At 4235mm long, 1825mm wide and 1603mm tall, the Funky Cat is rather more in step with the Volkswagen ID 3 and Hyundai Kona Electric than the smaller Honda E and Fiat 500 Electric - whose cutesy styling it more obviously emulates, giving the impression in pictures that it’s intended as a rival. But only when the first UK cars arrived and dealer visits began was International Motors able to show off the Funky Cat’s spacious back seats (room for six-footers) and airy cabin.
Bosses are keen to point out that it’s also not a rival for that other new Chinese hatchback everyone’s talking about – the MG 4 – because, despite a launch price of just north of £30,000, it’s a more overtly upmarket proposition. Neither the Funky Cat’s importer nor its maker is all that interested in capturing a huge chunk of market share in the UK, preferring instead to cement the brand’s premium billing with steady sales of around 5000 units by the end of 2023.
The highly specified First Edition car is the only one on offer right now and will remain so until such time as bosses see fit to introduce the sporty Funky Cat GT (tweaks are primarily chassis- and style-focused) and the longer-range variant (with a 61kWh battery boosting range to 261 miles) at some point in 2023, when the longer and sportier ‘Next Cat’ fastback will also come to UK showrooms.
Ora presents the Funky Cat as a small car with big-car tech and prestige - and that’s an ethos that carries through to its dynamic character. Not in a bad way (this is a fantastically easy thing to thread down tight, slick, congested country lanes) but in the impressive composure it is able to maintain at speed and on rougher surfaces.
On the motorway, it holds its lane comfortably and predictably, requiring minimal correction in crosswinds in the wake of overtaking lorries (both out in force on the day we tested the car), and though it doesn’t tout particularly lofty power and torque outputs, there’s plenty of performance in reserve for high-speed overtaking and merging. There’s a bit of buffeting and tyre roar to speak of, but nothing that would grate over the course of a lap of the M25, for example (it won’t go much further on a charge, anyway), and the quilted leatherette seats – albeit contrived in their retro ‘plushness’, somewhat reminiscent of a ’50s Pontiac – are generously padded, comfortably shaped and flexible in their positioning.
