Here we have a Geely Icon, as seen parked on the road in the summer of 2023 in Beijing, China. The license plates are of Hebei, the province that surrounds the capital. The Geely Icon is a rather special car, an oddball, in the sense that it doesn’t look like any other Geely.
The Geely Icon is a subcompact crossover SUV launched on the Chinese car market in 2020 with an update in 2023. The car we have here is a brand-new post-update example. The Geely Icon is aimed at a young audience and thus features and relatively progressive design, with a double grille, split headlights, black pillars, and Citroen-style ‘cushions’ on the doors.
When the Icon was launched, many Chinese car makers brabbled about ‘personalizing’ in their marketing materials. Geely took that quite far with the Icon. It is available in 23 (!) exterior color combinations and 10 interior color combinations. That is a lot for a modern Chinese car. Most car makers offer up to five colors or so. The Icon that I saw is painted in a color called Sea Salt Blue, with a Beige Black interior. As mentioned in previous posts, Chinese car brands like to have colorful color names for the exterior, but interior color names are generally a bit more factual.
The interior is nice but a tad old-school compared to the competition, with loads of buttons and a big round steering wheel. The screens are relatively small: a 10.25-inch instrument panel and a 12.3-inch touch screen. But it looks cool, with ICON stitching on the seats and lots of square shapes.
The fashionable bag matches nicely with the car’s design. That’s what you call a hit at the target audience. The Geely Icon is a compact car, sized 4350x1815x1620, and the wheelbase is 2640 mm.
Geely kept it simple with the engines. There is only one: a 1.5 turbo 4-pot with an output of 181 hp and 290 Nm, good for a 200 km/h top speed, a 0-100 in 7.9 seconds, and a fuel consumption of 6.3 liters per 100 kilometers. The transmission is a 7-speed DCT, sending all horses to the front wheels.
The badge is aimed at young folks too; almost too hip, isn’t it? The black 290T badge refers to the torque number and the turbo.
Characters: 吉利汽车, Geely Auto.
The 2023 Geely Icon is available in 3 trim levels plus many special editions. The trim level names are too cool to handle as well (translated): Chocolate Mellow, Protagonist, and Chocolate Premium. The car we have here is a top-spec Chocolate Premium. It costs 114.900 yuan or $16.1K.
The Geely Icon is a cool Geely. When it was launched, we all wondered if it was the first of a new line of wilder Geely cars. But that didn’t happen, and the Icon remains a somewhat lonely oddball in Geely’s current lineup.