Bajaj Qute Review - In-depth test drive of South Africa’s cheapest “car”

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What you're about to watch is our review of the new Bajaj Cute , which has captured the imagination of South Africans everywhere but stay tuned to the channel and subscribe so that you don't miss our Bajaj drag race .

Yes , we raised the Bajaj against something .

Well , let me keep that a secret for now .

Ok , so this is a weird day .

Um having a cute on the edge .

How does it sound like there's a window open ?

Hello and welcome to the inside of the new age .

Cute .

And before I start this review , remember the cars do cos has the largest selection of used cars online right now .

Anywhere in South Africa .

Go find your next car .

Ok , here we go .

The review .

You've all been waiting for the social media star of our generation .

The age cute .

Flat out .

See .

Grab fourth 2 55 .

Let's go on the top speed .

Steve grab fifth , hit the rib 65 .

We're getting to the top speed now of 70 .

That's it .

And we're up against the limiter there it is .

Won't let you go further .

So the age has a top speed of 70 kilometers an hour and funnily enough when you get to 70 and it feels like the engine's got more to give .

But it , there's a , there's a limiter there .

Right .

So you can't go past 70 and , and that's a good thing .

Yeah .

Yeah .

So 0 to 100 .

Not applicable .

Ok .

And also don't corner too fast .

So , what is this thing ?

Well , technically it's not a car , even though it has four wheels and a steering wheel .

It's licensed in South Africa as a motorbike while more more accurately , a quadra and it is highway legal because the highway code in South Africa only speaks about displacement of engine , the engine size and this , this car qualifies or this thing qualifies , but with a max speed of 70 Ks an hour with cars around you doing 100 and 20 that's not a good idea .

Don't go on the highway in this thing .

You're just a hazard .

You're a hazard to everyone else .

You're a hazard to yourself .

So , what are we dealing with here ?

Well , it's a rear engine , rear wheel drive , quad recycle .

There's a little motorbike engine in the back .

It's 216 CCS which means 2160.2 liters .

Um , yeah , it has one piston .

It's a single cylinder , 216 cc .

Here come the power figures for you .

8.8 kilowatts .

The 08 is very important .

And 18.9 Newton meters .

And in my experience from having driven this around Cape Town for a bit , it's actually ok in , in stop start traffic and sort of on normal roads where the speed limit is 60 it's actually fine , wasn't expecting it to be , but it's fast enough off the line .

It's fast enough through the gears .

It gets to 60 Ks an hour .

Fast enough .

You can definitely keep up with traffic in sort of urban situations .

And that's actually quite a pleasant surprise for me .

I was a little bit worried about that , but keep in mind as soon as you start adding passengers and luggage to the cut , it , it doesn't cope so well .

In fact , I really battled to actually get it to its top speed with four passengers inside .

So let me take you through what it's like to drive .

Um , not great .

If I'm honest .

Um , I think the biggest concern here for me is the roll over risk .

It really does feel like it will topple over very easily , very , very easily .

And I'm worried if you put more weight on the roof because there's no boots .

So if you put all your luggage on the roof , you know , then it's even more top heavy .

It's not great in cross winds at all .

And you , you don't wanna , you really don't wanna .

Well .

Ok .

Oh , right .

Yeah .

Don't , don't swerve too hard either then , then you're wow .

Then you're going straight on to your side .

In fact , that's my biggest safety concern with this thing .

I mean , obviously if you're on , say a motorbike , you're more vulnerable , you're more exposed just but on a motorbike you can maneuver , you can swerve very quickly to get out of the way of something or if there's an obstacle in the road .

That's my concern here .

I think this is quite a big roll over risk .

You have to be very careful with how you drive it .

You can't drive too quickly around corners .

So just keep that in mind .

Um , there is an air con of sorts , uh , while a fan sort of comes out of here , uh , the switch through it is down there .

Um , you can rotate these so you can get some air on you .

Uh , and it goes out of the windscreen as well , so you can face those onto the windscreen .

Uh , so if it's fogged up or whatever or you can face it on to yourself for a little bit of fresh air .

Yeah , one of the complaints I have is the seat is sort of like sitting on a park bench .

There's no lateral support whatsoever .

So when you're going around corners , you sort of get thrown around the cabin , you have to really sort of hold on to the steering wheel .

It felt like it was gonna go over it .

It was a 30 Ks an hour , right ?

Let me give you a bumper to bumper tour of the baja , cute .

This is the front bumper .

Yeah , this is the boot .

Um , now you do need the key to open it except it's currently locked right now .

And , um , it's quite easy to break in as you , as you can see .

Uh , it's not a huge boot and you do need it because there isn't actually a rear boot , but I wouldn't recommend leaving anything in here because , well , I can see that water and dust are getting in .

It's not very well sealed .

Um , so don't leave anything that isn't waterproof inside there coming around to the side .

We have these stunning 12 inch wheels .

Uh , those are 135 70 12 inch and it has one of my favorite things on this whole car .

These , the wheel nuts , they just literally look like you can get them at Boulder's warehouse .

There's no way those are automotive grade wheel nuts .

They're , they're just standard nuts .

Wing mirrors are not electrically adjustable as you might have expected .

You need to adjust them yourselves , but that's fine .

Here's your door handle .

Obviously , there's no central locking .

You have to open everything with the key .

I'll give you a proper tour of the interior in a second .

But while I'm walking around , I just wanted to show you the hand brake , that's where it is .

So it's a little bit easy to forget , but it becomes quite easy to use after , you know , after a while you're used to it and just sort of up and down with , with your right hand .

Let me show you the rear leg room .

Now , this is a , yeah , the doors don't really , they don't really stay in position .

Um , you just have to keep them in place .

So something that actually has impressed me or maybe surprised me rather is how much space there is in the back .

I mean , look how much space there is for humans , you know , and you get lots of leg room .

Look at this , I was fine .

You know , I wasn't expecting that .

It's not too bad .

This is where you put the fuel in , little fuel filler door there .

It's actually a little tricky .

You kind of have to get the fuel pump nozzle , sort of below to get in there .

It's a little bit of a weird design and , uh , it takes eight whole liters eight at the current prices .

That's 100 and 30 bucks , right .

Moving on to the back .

As I mentioned , there's no boots , you can't open anything here and that's why they've put a roof rack .

So that's where all your luggage goes .

But what there is back here is the engine , all 216 ccs of it .

There .

It is .

So , yeah , it's a little , little rear engine , rear wheel drive motorbike basically .

And that's pretty much it .

That is the sage cute on the outside .

Let's hop inside and I'll take you on an interior tour .

Welcome to the inside of the cute in case you forget what you're driving , it says cute on the steering wheel .

Uh There's no airbags .

The hooter works very well though .

Wow , that's very loud .

Um You do get a little radio c the MP3 US P A radio thing .

There's two speakers underneath the dashboard here is your gear lever , five gears up , five gears down and then you pull this little thing to get into reverse .

You got a little cigarette lighter thingy here .

So you can charge your phone if you buy an adapter two cubby holes , which annoyingly you need to use the key for .

So if you know , if you need to quickly get something out of there and you've got the key in the ignition , you can't unlock it .

You have to switch off off the car , uh windows open in both directions , which is quite interesting .

You do get a sun visor , however , I don't recommend using it because it's completely in your line of sight .

So yeah , there's a little interior light up here uh in the doors , there's actually an enormous amount of storage space .

I'm really quite surprised by that .

That's actually very , very practical .

Your spare wheel is down here by the passengers legs and the jack to jack the car up is also under here .

So that's quite important .

You might need to know that there's plastic on the seats , so we're not taking it off because this car is actually for sale .

So we wanna leave that on for the dealer , so we don't mess up the seats .

Um , and that is about it .

There's a seat belt for each passenger , which is nice little , little bit of storage here in the middle , no drinks holders though .

But what I discovered this morning is you can actually put your coffee here and it actually stays , doesn't really move too much .

Let me quickly take you through the instrument cluster , but let me turn it on for you .

So it looks like it's come from a motorbike probably has on the left here is your fuel indicator , five little bars and it does have a reserve fuel light .

So that's quite important .

I quite like that the Speedo where it goes past 70 the numbers are in red , you know , because normally on your rev counter , which it doesn't have the , the , the numbers after the red line would be red .

But in this , the speed is red , that's the danger zone .

Don't go there .

But anyway , there's a hard limit at 70 .

So you can't go much faster than that unless you're going down a massive downhill , maybe , perhaps .

Um , when you put it into neutral , there's a big green end over here .

So , you know , you are in neutral , that's quite important .

Uh That's your range over there .

So , on a full tank of eight liters , it says it will do 100 and 86 Ks probably get a bit better than that because , you know , we were driving it , we were drag racing it and that sort of thing .

And then this one in the bottom here is your gear indicator that's quite useful because you don't really know which gear you're in at any one time .

So that's pretty useful as you go up through the gears .

But otherwise it's pretty much what you would expect from a little car .

Really .

I mean , it is technically sort of motor bike quadracel , but you do drive it like a car .

There's three pedals , clutch over there , brake over there , accelerator over there .

So since this car has arrived in South Africa , people have been going nuts about it .

Social media is just full of memes , it's full of videos of this car .

There's a terrible video of it falling over , you know , the , no , I don't think there's a single South African who doesn't know what this car is right now .

And when I was driving out to the race track today , I mean , people were pulling up alongside me taking videos shouting at me asking me to stop so that they could see the car .

It's insane how much interest there is in this car , but , well , this quad recycle , but I , I don't think I can recommend this as a passenger car .

I really don't .

At 75,000 rand , you can buy something decent second hand .

And I , I think that's the way to go .

I mean , if you go into cars or coz right now and you can find yourself a nice Polo or an old Hyundai I 10 or something like that .

And sure a lot of people are scared by car maintenance but it's just the reality of owning a vehicle , vehicles break .

They need parts of place and all the rest of it .

I do suspect this will be very , very easy to maintain , but I don't think you're getting enough of a car like proposition here to make it worth not going out and just buying yourself a proper car for the same price .

I think the use case here is fairly limited .

It's ok around town .

You , you can't really go on highways .

I mean , legally you can , but I wouldn't advise it and perhaps if you turn it into a bit of a panel van , get rid of the back seats , you know , and use this for sort of little deliveries .

I don't know , little maybe restaurant deliveries or if you work for take out or something like that , you got to get parcels around , then it's not too bad .

But , you know , South Africans , we do long distances , we use our highways , we use our freeways .

Some of our urban roads have speed limits of 80 kilometers an hour .

So you can't even , you know , get up to speed on those sorts of roads .

I mean , that's all a concern for me .

Absolutely .

No airbags in here .

No A B si mean , you are your own side impact protection .

Your , your shoulder is your , you know , that's your side impact .

I mean , I , I do actually quite like it for what it is .

It , it , it does what it says on the tin .

You know , if you're not expecting a car like experience , if you think about it more like a tuck tuck or something like that , you know , then it is what it is .

It's , it's just a little motorbike with four wheels .

Really ?

So you're looking to buy a cute , well , you'll need to part with 75,000 RAND .

That's it .

There's no higher or lower spec model to choose from .

It comes standard with a two year 20,000 kilometer warranty , but there's no service plan included and there isn't one available as an optional extra .

So you'll have to get the servicing done yourself .

You can buy or service your new cute at one of three dealerships in Johannesburg , one in Pretoria and one in Cape Town .

And soon there will be one in Pe and one in Durban Baja is looking to expand their footprint in the country .

So if you're a dealer and you're looking to sell , get in touch with them .

Thanks for watching .

Thanks very much for watching .

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It's a good idea for a bunch of reasons which I actually don't have really a lot of time to go into .

But uh it's good .

It's a good idea .

Excellent .

Thanks for watching .

I said that already budget insurance affordable because you can't afford not to .