An honest Moskvich 5 review
We rent this car out, which is the obvious reason to distrust a review of it written by us. The only useful response is to be specific about the bad parts, name the things we got wrong, and be clear about what we still do not know. That is what follows.
What the car is
A compact five-door crossover, roughly 4.5 metres long, 1.85 wide and 1.70 tall, with five seats. A 1.5-litre turbocharged petrol engine — the only engine offered — producing around 150bhp in ours, across a model range of roughly 136 to 184bhp by version. A CVT automatic gearbox and front-wheel drive.
Underneath it is a rebadged JAC Sehol X6. That is not an accusation; it is the most useful fact available, because it tells you the engineering is mainstream and mass-produced rather than experimental.
What it does well
Comfort. The suspension is tuned soft and absorbs the broken urban surfaces that make up most real driving. Three hours in the seats has not produced a complaint from us or from anyone returning it.
Slow traffic. The CVT has no shift steps, so there is no small lurching between first and second at walking pace. This is the single most praised thing about the car by people who have actually driven it, and it is invisible in any specification comparison.
Getting in and out. The seat sits at a height you step across to. Square door apertures, no ducking. For anyone with a stiff knee or a child in a seat, this matters daily.
Not being a nuisance. Over a year the car has needed servicing, tyres, pads, wipers and a bulb. Nothing unscheduled, no recovery, no diagnostic dead ends. That is an honest record and it is shorter than we expected.
What it does badly
It is inert. The steering is light and communicates nothing. Body control is adequate rather than resolved. There is no road and no corner where the car gives anything back for paying attention. If you enjoy driving, you will not enjoy this.
The slip road. Full acceleration from 40mph sends revs straight to peak power where they sit while the car catches up. It is normal CVT behaviour, it is manageable, and it is still the least pleasant thing the car does.
The infotainment. Everything works and some of it reads oddly, which is what a rebadge from another market usually produces. Irritating rather than broken, and it has not improved with familiarity.
The ecosystem. Fewer garages have seen one, parts are sometimes filed under the JAC name, and resale values are genuinely unpredictable rather than merely low. None of this is the car's fault and all of it is a real cost of living with it.
What we got wrong
Three things, recorded honestly. We assumed the CVT would be the car's weakness and it turned out to be its strongest daily feature. We wrote the cabin off as plain in the first week, and a year of it staying tidy under heavy use turned "plain" into "durable". And we expected the badge to cause mechanical problems, when the actual friction has been entirely administrative.
Getting three first impressions wrong in one year is a reasonable argument for not trusting anybody's first impressions, including ours.
What we still cannot tell you
High-mileage behaviour, because not enough of these cars have covered enough miles for anyone to speak honestly about it. Long-term corrosion, for the same reason. And two numbers everybody wants: boot capacity in litres and real-world fuel consumption. Both are published widely in contradictory versions and we have not verified either against manufacturer documentation, so we leave them out rather than pick one.
Who it is for
Someone who wants comfortable, automatic, five-seat transport for city and suburban driving, keeps cars a long time, and is not looking for the experience of driving to be part of the appeal. For that person this is a well-judged car at a sensible price and the badge uncertainty barely registers.
Who should avoid it
Anyone on a three-year replacement cycle, because resale uncertainty will likely consume the purchase saving. Anyone who enjoys driving for its own sake. And anyone unwilling to spend an afternoon finding an independent garage willing to take the car on.
The honest conclusion
It is a good car and an unexciting one, and those two statements do not conflict. The things wrong with it are mostly not mechanical, which after a year is the outcome we would have taken.
If you would rather test that than take our word for it — reasonably, given who is writing — hire the Moskvich 5 in Salford for a week and form your own view. That is a better outcome for both of us than you believing this page.