Review: 2026 Chery Tiggo 8 Super Hybrid
There are certain cars that immediately make you want to find a nice twisty road, drop the windows and pretend you're Colin McRae.
The Chery Tiggo 8 isn't one of them.
And that's not necessarily an insult.
The all-new Tiggo 8 is Chery's large seven-seat SUV, sitting above the Tiggo 7 and below the flagship Tiggo 9 in the UK range. At £28,545 for the 1.6-litre petrol version, or £33,545 for the 1.5-litre Super Hybrid, it arrives waving a remarkably large stick at the established competition.
It's big, well equipped, comfortable enough, sensibly priced and absolutely festooned with technology.
It's also another Chinese SUV that occasionally makes you wonder whether the designers have ever actually driven a car while trying to do something as complicated as, say, adjusting the door mirrors.
But we'll come to that.
Designed for the commute, not the commute to the Nürburgring
The first thing to understand about the Tiggo 8 is what it isn't.
It isn't trying to be a driver's car. It doesn't have the steering feel of a BMW, the suspension sophistication of a Range Rover or the sort of chassis that makes you deliberately take the long way home because there's a cracking bit of road involved.
Instead, it's designed for the commute, regardless of how far that commute happens to be, and how many people you take.
And once you accept that, the Tiggo 8 starts to make considerably more sense.
The 1.6-litre turbo petrol produces 147PS and 275Nm, driving through a seven-speed dual-clutch automatic. Official combined economy is 36.2mpg.
The Super Hybrid, on the other hand, is a rather more interesting proposition, combining a 1.5-litre turbocharged petrol engine with a plug-in hybrid system to produce 204PS and 365Nm.
Chery quotes up to 201.77mpg under WLTP conditions, although, as ever with PHEVs, your actual figure depends rather heavily on whether you remember to plug the thing in.
The hybrid is the one I'd have.
Not because it's going to make you feel like Lewis Hamilton, but because the additional electric assistance makes the Tiggo 8 feel more relaxed and effortless, and that's what this car is good at.
It also has a surprising amount of straight-line poke, enough to put a huge grin on your face!
On the road
The steering is light and fairly vague, and there's noticeable body movement when you start asking questions of the chassis.
Point it down a winding B-road and you'll quickly discover that enthusiasm isn't really part of the Tiggo 8's job description. It rolls, the steering takes a moment to respond and there's little encouragement to start pretending you're in a rally car. But drive it sensibly and the story changes.
Around town it's easy to manoeuvre, visibility is generally good and the automatic gearbox removes much of the effort from stop-start driving. On faster A-roads and motorways it settles into its stride nicely, with respectable refinement and surprisingly little wind and road noise.
The suspension is a mixed bag. It can cope perfectly well with ordinary British roads, but it doesn't always have the polished composure you'd expect from a more expensive SUV.
It's not disastrous. It's just a reminder that £28,545 buys an awful lot of Chery rather than an awful lot of suspension engineering.
The Super Hybrid is the better long-distance companion. Its electric assistance makes urban driving smoother and more relaxed, while the petrol engine can take over when the journey gets longer.
Chery quotes up to 56 miles of electric range and up to 745 miles overall for the Super Hybrid, although real-world results will inevitably depend on temperature, speed, traffic, load and how often you charge it.
Without charging it, I saw between 56 and 61mpg.
For the weekly shop, school run, commute and the occasional trek across the country to see relatives you've been avoiding for six months, it makes a great deal of sense.
What about off-road?
Well... don't.
At least, don't confuse "SUV" with “off-roader".
The Tiggo 8 is a road-going family SUV rather than a mud-plugging 4x4. The UK range currently centres on front-wheel-drive versions, although Chery does offer AWD variants in some markets and references off-road drive modes on higher-spec versions elsewhere. I did notice a ‘Snow Mode’ fitted to this vehicle, mind.
That's important because, despite the name of this website, not everything wearing an SUV badge needs to be driven diagonally through a quarry.
The Tiggo's ground clearance, tyres, road-biased suspension and general demeanour tell you where its talents lie. It'll cope with a muddy campsite track, wet grass and a gravel lane without having a nervous breakdown, but this isn't the vehicle I'd choose for green lanes in November. Which is fine as most owners will never need it to.
Inside: blimey, they've thrown everything at it
The interior is probably one of the Tiggo 8's biggest strengths.
It's a large, modern cabin with a surprisingly premium feel for the money. The seats are comfortable, though the seatbelt holsters can be a bit uncomfortable for those with… larger hips. There's plenty of space in the first two rows and the overall impression is much more expensive than the price tag suggests.
There's a 10.25” driver's display and a huge 15.6” central touchscreen, while wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, wireless charging and a 540-degree camera system are available as standard equipment on the UK models.
That camera system is particularly useful.
A 360-degree camera is handy. A 540-degree camera sounds like something developed by NASA after someone lost a wheel nut, but it genuinely helps when parking something this size.
There’s yet more toys, including ventilated front seats, heated and ventilated second-row seats, a heated steering wheel, head-up display, passenger-seat massage and a 12-speaker Sony audio system.
It's frankly ridiculous how much equipment Chery has managed to squeeze into a car costing little more than some manufacturers charge for a well-equipped hatchback.
And then there's the seven-seat arrangement.
Chery itself is fairly sensible about this and describes the Tiggo 8 as a 5+2. That's about right. The middle row is spacious, while the third row is better suited to children or smaller adults.
With all seven seats in use, boot space is only 117 litres. Fold the third row and you're looking at considerably more room, with around 739 litres quoted by independent measurements, and folding everything down produces up to 1,930 litres.
So, can you get a muddy dog, camping gear and the usual collection of rubbish that somehow accumulates in the back of a family SUV? Yes.
But if you've got seven people aboard, you'll need to be selective. In other words, the Labrador can come, but the gazebo stays at home.
For five people, there's plenty of versatility. Fold the rear seats and you've got a useful load area that should swallow camping equipment, shopping, bikes, luggage and the mysterious collection of outdoor tat that every Mud Life reader seems to accumulate.
Mind the traffic…
There is one little bit of family practicality that had me scratching my head. Access to the third row is provided by the offside second-row seat, which folds and slides forward to create the opening.
Now, that might not sound like a big deal until you picture the school run. Park the Tiggo 8 on the road, put the hazards on, and your little darlings have to climb in and out onto the traffic side of the car.
And if you've ever watched a small child attempt to get into the back of a seven-seater while simultaneously carrying a school bag, football boots and half a banana, you'll appreciate the inconvenience.
That said, it's not a deal-breaker, you can still gain access from the nearside, but it’s a bit of a faff, and let's be honest, most seven-seat SUVs aren't going to be spending their lives ferrying six passengers around, but it's one of those things worth mentioning.
Oh, and the UK car's third row isn't equipped with ISOFIX/top-tether points either.
There's even a Pet Mode.
It's exactly the sort of feature that sounds like marketing nonsense until you own a dog. It keeps the climate control running and the car secured, allowing the cabin to remain comfortable for a pet when the vehicle is parked. That earns Chery some serious Mud Life points. However Pet Mode only works when there’s a certain amount of battery charge.
And now for my favourite bit: the irritations
Here we go.
I like technology. However, I don’t like technology being used as an excuse to remove perfectly good buttons.
The Tiggo 8 has fallen into the same trap as other manufacturers. The central touchscreen is enormous, but too many everyday functions are buried within it.
Want to adjust the door mirrors? Delve into the central touchscreen (it took me a good 10-minutes to find it).
Climate controls? Touchscreen
Driver assistance systems? Touchscreen.
Annoyingly, the Tiggo asks you to interact with a screen for things that should require approximately half a second and no visual concentration whatsoever. There is of course voice control - but I hate talking to a car, I’m not talking to KITT from Knight Rider!
I asked it to tell me how to adjust the door mirrors, but it couldn’t answer.
There is a vast array of safety technology fitted as standard, including lane departure warning, lane keeping assistance, emergency lane keeping, adaptive cruise control, blind-spot monitoring, traffic sign recognition and autonomous emergency braking.
All good stuff in principle, but some of it can be overenthusiastic.
Sometimes we simply don't want the car shouting at us because we've passed a side road with a 20mph speed limit and we’re happily doing 30mph. To be fair, pretty much every car I’ve driven this year does this.
The systems are there for good reasons, and modern safety regulations increasingly dictate what manufacturers must fit and how those systems behave. But the user experience still matters.
Make the settings easy to find, and give the driver a proper physical shortcut.
And breathe.
The interior is another big tick.
It looks and feels far more expensive than the badge suggests, equipment levels are generous and the amount of technology is frankly bonkers.
Space is good, flexibility is useful and the car is perfectly suited to family duties.
Verdict
The Chery Tiggo 8 is a fascinating car because it demonstrates just how much the Chinese manufacturers have changed the new-car market.
A few years ago, you'd have looked at a £28,545 seven-seat SUV from a new Chinese manufacturer and wondered what corners had been cut.
Now you're wondering why everyone else is charging so much.
The Tiggo 8 isn't perfect. In fact, there are times when it feels as though Chery's engineers have spent six months developing an incredibly clever piece of technology and then forgotten to ask whether anyone actually wanted it.
The mirror adjustment is daft.
The touchscreen dependency is daft.
Some of the driver assistance systems are daft.
And no, I don't want to fiddle with a screen when I want the heater to blow warm air at my feet.
But beneath all that is a fundamentally sensible family SUV.
It is comfortable enough, spacious, well equipped, economical - particularly in Super Hybrid form, and very good value for money.
It doesn't want to be driven hard. It doesn't want to climb a Welsh mountain. It doesn't want to be your next green-laning weapon.
It wants to take the kids to school, get you to work, collect the shopping, swallow the dog, carry your camping gear and then quietly waft you 200 miles up the motorway without making a fuss.
And, actually, that's a pretty useful set of talents.
The Tiggo 8 isn't going to make you grin like a loon on a twisty road. But it'll probably save you enough money to buy the camping gear to take somewhere instead. And that's got to count for something.