Sar Mecha Dragon - an electric sedan from Great Wall

Another gem straight from the pages of the Chinese press. This one required a triple take to make sure it wasn’t a joke or a misdirection by Chinese sources but no, this contraption is very real and Great Wall is responsible for bringing it to life.

Chinese companies have some of the most original names out there and many of their products follow that trend, browsing pages of AliExpress can bring countless hours of pointless laughs. Unfortunately, this adventurous naming approach has been filtering to the automotive world for a while.

That’s how we end up with Ora Funky Cat or Build Your Dream, CoolBear, Chery Skin, Geely Leading, Urban Ark, SouEast or aptly named Superlong. Let’s not forget about the Gonow or the Dongfeng Fukang. Although it may sound funny when you explain to your friends that you bought the CoolBear because you don’t like your sister’s Chery Skin and your neighbor's Funky Cat is slower than your dad’s Superlong, try doing the same using bZ4X, e:NP1, ID.4 and bZ3 instead.

One thing for sure - Chinese names, be it for cars or products, are far easier to remember than the current trendy combinations of letters, numbers and random spaces. And they can make people laugh.

So - the Great Wall Sar Mecha Dragon. That name would have never passed a prototype stage, heck - the design would have never left the napkin it was clearly drawn on. But here we are, looking at a 5.2 meters long sedan that looks like something from a 1990s Manga comic. And it’s awesome.

The car was first shown in 2021 at Guangzhou Auto Show and then the world forgot about it. Great Wall didn’t and thanks to official homologation from MIIT we know the car is heading to the market - soon.

At 5.24 meters long and 1.95 meters wide, the Mecha Dragon is actually 3 cm longer than Mercedes EQS. It weighs more as well - 2,550 kg. Top speed is 180 kph, which isn’t much considering it comes with two electric motors putting out 544 hp together and 763 Nm of torque. The 0-100 kph sprint takes a respectable 3 seconds and that top speed is apparently limited.

There is very little info about the battery - it’s made by CATL and it hasn’t got the CTP tech but according to the company, it is good for 802 km of driving range, although as usual this is in the CLTC cycle known for its optimism.

The bolt-on wide arches and adaptive rear spoiler are nothing compared to what we find at the rear of Mecha Dragon. It has two fake tailpipes that not only light up red when the car accelerates but actually use Harman sound simulation technology to make noise. 5 different noises to be precise, including ignition, acceleration, lift-off. Cannot wait to see the first video review of this car - just to see this gadget in action.

On the inside it is actually quite normal - rather plush interior, giant 27-inch main screen with a 10.25-inch instrument cluster and a 25-inch HUD. Unexpectedly, the Mecha Dragon has a round steering wheel, at this point finding a bicycle handlebars would have been less surprising.

There is a 16 speaker Harman Kardon sound system, there are 4 LiDAR sensors, 7 UHD cameras, 4 surround cameras, 5 mmWave radars, 12 ultrasonic radars and 1 ultra-precision GPS unit. The autonomous system runs on the DaVinci platform from Huawei and is powered by NPU with 400TOPS and CPU with 440,000 DMIPS. That is one of the most impressive specification sheets out there.

There is absolutely no chance we will ever see the Sar Mecha Dragon anywhere else but in China. The hope is there are some brave souls out there who will consider a private import route just to get their hands on this weirdly amazing vehicle.

A quick quiz - three cars park together at Pebble Beach: Bugatti Mistral, Lamborghini Egoista and Sar Mecha Dragon. Which one do you think will attract the biggest crowd?

Source