Ora 03/Funky Cat review

Everything from the 03's round headlights, to its soft-edged profile and throwback cabin design makes it clear the car is focused on style. But that doesn't mean there's no substance to go with it. You only need look at the car's massive standard equipment list to see no corners have been cut. Every car includes keyless entry, electrically adjustable front seats, and a full dual-screen infotainment system with Apple CarPlay, Android Auto, a built-in sat nav and wireless phone charging. There's also a full range of active driver aids including adaptive cruise control, lane keep assist, automatic emergency braking, a 360º camera and rear parking sensors.

Car brands may be putting most of their efforts into building electric SUVs, but the 03 doesn't have the electric hatchback market all to itself. Rivals include the Volkswagen ID.3, Cupra Born, MG4, BYD Dolphin and electric versions of the Mini Cooper. In fact, Mini's latest electric hatchback actually shares some of its battery-powered platform with the Ora, since the new Cooper is being built at a BMW-GWM joint venture factory in China.

All the Ora's rivals – with the exception of the Mini – have a decidedly futuristic look to go with their cutting-edge electric powertrains. That helps cars like the 03 stand out by going hard in the other direction. Features like the rounded headlights and contrast-colour roofline echo old Mini models, while the bonnet bulges and Fuchs-style alloy wheels put us in mind of a '60s Porsche. That latter connection may be no accident as the 03 was penned by Emanuel Derta, whose previous credits include several Porsche models.

The cabin continues the retro theme with striped patterns and piping details on the upholstery, and a cute twin-spoke steering wheel. Of course, it's still a car from the 21st century, so you get two big screens in a single pod on top of the dashboard. Passenger space is respectable for the class but, as we'll find in the practicality section below, boot space falls disappointingly short.

There's a pair of battery options – a 48kWh pack and a long-range 63kWh pack. We tried the smaller battery paired with the more powerful 171hp electric motor. Claimed range from this setup is 193 miles – pretty standard considering the battery size but falls short of the VW ID.3 and BYD Dolphin, which both score more than 240 claimed miles from their smallest battery packs. Nevertheless, that should be enough for most drivers if the majority of their driving is in city and suburban areas.

Back when the 03 was still called the Funky Cat, prices started from more than £30,000. That was a steep figure for brand-new buyers to swallow, so GWM has brought that number down over time, with Pure models now costing from £24,995 – or £21,245 after Ora's own £3,750 purchase grant to match the UK government's scheme. That's substantially cheaper than most of the Ora's rivals, but it gets even better if you look at nearly new examples. Two-year-old examples are available from Motorpoint from just £11,000 – you'll struggle to find a similar petrol-powered car that cheap.

Along with the conspicuously retro exterior, the 03's cabin is probably its biggest selling point. Most of the visible surfaces are either leatherette or faux-suede, and there are attractive stitched details on the seats and door panels that recall classic car interiors. Trim and upholstery is black on entry-level Pure cars, while our test car had a tasteful turquoise/beige theme to match its Aurora Green exterior paintwork.

Spend a little more time in the 03, however, and you'll notice that the cabin looks nicer than it feels. For example, the leatherette upholstery is grainier than the equivalent in rivals, or the 03's soft-touch surfaces which are just a little less soft than VW's or BYD's. The same goes for the Ora's two-spoke stitched leather steering wheel, which feels just a little cheaper under your fingers than other brands. On the plus side, the actual build quality seems solid with no creaks or rattles as the car goes over bumps.

While many key functions are found in the screen, there are still a few physical buttons in the 03's cabin. Most notable are the retro chrome toggle switches that are suspiciously reminiscent of the Mini Hatchback, controlling front and rear defoggers, the A/C and the centre screen. There's a gear selector dial in the centre console to choose between R, N and D, with P being a button in the centre, but it's odd that the dial keeps turning once you've reached R or D, and takes an annoyingly long time to actually select the chosen gear. We also found the indicators frustrating – the one-touch function is tricky to select so it's easy to accidentally press it fully even if you're just quickly changing lanes. And they don't self-cancel properly.

The Ora's dual-screen infotainment setup is fairly standard in the industry now, but it's far from the class best. For starters, the actual screen unit itself was occasionally a bit dim-witted, leaving us jabbing at on-screen icons with no response. Then you have the system's home page – a place where most rivals tend to put functions like the map, audio controls or maybe some trip info. Not so in the Ora, where most of the space is given over to massive icons that visit webpages like reuters.com, which seems like an ineffective use of screen area.

More baffling is the 03's sat nav. At first we didn't realise our car had GPS, as there's no button in the cabin that activates it – nothing on the dashboard or the screen, or among the tiny shortcut buttons on the side. However, the 03 randomly opened the map on the centre screen – entirely unprompted, about halfway through our drive – leading us to hunt for a way to access the function deliberately. Eventually, we discovered that the 'home' shortcut button actually toggles between the home screen and the sat nav. We imagine this unintuitive design has caused more than a few 03 owners to miss their car's sat nav completely.

The 03 earns a mixed score in the practicality stakes. Traditionally, the benefit of an EV's chassis is that you can push the wheels far out to the ends of the car, unlocking more interior space without making the car any longer. This is certainly evident in the 03's rear seats, which have lots of leg and footroom plus just enough headroom to be able to fit tall adults.

However, try to seat a tall adult up front and they might be asking for a little more adjustment in the seat, which doesn't quite go as far back as the 03's rivals. On the plus side, the dashboard is fairly upright and doesn't protrude far into the front seat area, so our lofty test subject can sit with their knees bent a bit higher without too much discomfort. It's also a bit disappointing that, despite having electric adjustment on both front seats, only the driver gets height adjustment, while the passenger is stuck at just one level.

Open the boot and you'll discover how Ora's been able to give rear passengers so much legroom, because the 03's cargo space is poor. The 228-litre figure beats the 03's Mini Cooper cousin but that's about it, with all main rivals offering comfortably more than 300 litres – the ID.3, for example, has a 385-litre space that's much more useful. The cargo space's length isn't especially bad for the class, but the narrowness of the space, the high boot floor and low parcel shelf severely limit what you'll be able to store back there.

You're not exactly left with generous storage in the cabin either. There's some open space beneath the dashboard for keys or a wallet, just ahead of a pair of cupholders. Behind that is the plinth-style centre console, which offers only a fairly average amount of capacity. The glovebox is reasonably wide, however, and the door pockets are equally generous for front and rear passengers.

There's two battery sizes available for the 03. We're testing the smaller 48kWh unit here, which claims 193 miles to a full charge. That's some way off the standards of the 03's rivals, until you remember that it's thousands of pounds cheaper to buy, which does help excuse the underwhelming range figure. Stepping up to the 63kWh version pushes range to 261 miles, but we'd consider the MG4 or ID.3 instead if a long driving range is a must.

Recharge speeds aren't great either. Ora says the smaller battery model can DC fast charge at 64kW, which is among the slowest in the class and means the quoted 15-80% charge time is a sedate 43 minutes. Bigger-battery versions get a mostly negligible bump to 67kW, with a 15-80% charge taking 48 minutes. If you're mainly recharging your car at home overnight on AC power, this won't really matter but it does mean longer drives might be a bit of a slog in the 03.

On-paper performance is solid. There's a 171hp electric motor on the front axle and a claimed 0-62mph time of 8.3 seconds. On real roads, however, the 03 doesn't seem quite as punchy as you'd expect. The most likely culprit is the accelerator mapping Ora's given the car, which gently ramps up the motor's power from a standstill, even if you pin the throttle pedal. At higher speeds, such as when leaving a roundabout onto a motorway slip road, the car feels much closer to that claimed 171hp figure – it just won't push you into your chair when launching away from a stop.

We would've liked some more hard controls to adjust the car's regenerative braking system – for instance, swapping between high regen in the city or low regen on the motorway. This can only be adjusted through several submenus within the screen. We also feel it's an odd decision to make the drive mode selector a small button hidden by the driver's right knee. At least, once you've found it, you'll notice that Sport mode does feel a bit more reactive than Normal mode, helping the 03 seem a little quicker.

Out on the road, the 03's body feels really stiff, with no sense of flex or creaks as it goes over bumps or potholes. That body stiffness means the suspension is able to work more effectively and, as a result, the 03's ride quality is fairly good. Large impacts like speedbumps or expansion joints are softened before they reach the base of your seat, and only a little high-frequency patter is transferred into the cabin. That said, we still think the ID.3 and MG4 ride even better, so they might be worth cross-shopping first.

Sadly, that stiffness doesn't translate into an especially sporty driving experience. As you push the car harder into corners, your only reward is more body lean, with little sense the car wants to tuck onto a tighter line if requested. This is in contrast to the platform-sharing Mini, which feels much more lively and more willing to attack a twisty country road. The Ora's softened suspension is the likely cause of the car's blunted steering response, although the car's slightly porky 1,540kg won't be helping here.

Refinement is a bit of a mixed bag. There's some wind noise from the windscreen at higher speeds but the most noticeable intrusion is the roar from the car's tyres, which is present at almost all speeds and gets especially grating on poor surfaces. The electric motor is effectively silent apart from the low-speed pedestrian warning sound that most EVs make. We found the 03's warning sound to be a fraction harsh, with a slightly discordant quality where most EV's usually choose a warm, soothing synthesiser sound.

We finished our drive in the 03 on a bit of a sour note. Like so many rivals, the 03 includes a full suite of active driver aids including adaptive cruise control, automatic emergency braking, lane-keep assist and active lane centring. They're annoyingly intrusive in the Ora, with the active lane centring being especially obnoxious as it tries to wrestle the car's steering wheel from you. You can turn these functions off, but they're buried deep in the infotainment system, which is already fairly tricky to navigate.