Originally the Hover SUV was one of the finest Chinese built SUVs on the market, and its sharp angle still turns CCT heads when ever one goes by, however Greatwall took the Hover name and turned it into its own brand, which is a fantastic idea. Now they will have an entire series of off road vehicles ranging from the miniature Hover M1 (below) to the ginormous Hover H7 luxury SUV. The Chinese car site, autohome.com.cn, is quite proactive in their testing of cars and they recently took the Hover M1 out on an AWD excursion to test its 4×4 system.
The Hover M1’s AWD system is quite a simple one, it is not all time AWD, the rear wheels basically kick in to play when the front wheels slip, this gives the Hover a slightly added boost. Obviously its not going to be a Nissan Patrol or a Toyota Landcruiser rival, but it is going to be a pretty decent for those who go off onto gravel roads and hard packed beaches every now and again. The M1 comes in both 4×2 and 4×4 specifications, oddly the ground clearance of the 4×4 model is actually slightly lower than the 4×2 version, the AWD version gets 145mm of clearence, where as the 4×2 gets 155m, at least according to GWM’s official site. Maximum torque from the 1.3L engine is 118Nm at 4200RPM which is not bad for a small engine.
Autohome.com.cn highly rated the M1’s AWD capabilities for such a small car and despite it being such a simple AWD system.
