The new Venucia T90 has been launched on the Chinese car market. Price starts at 109.800 yuan and ends at 154.800 yuan. The T90 is the new flagship of the Venucia brand and it is the production version of the 2015 Venucia Vow concept. The T90 has daring lines and style, a crossover SUV coupe that doesn’t easily fit into a single segment.

Low slung sloping profile with a high rear end. Proper roof rails are a good thing. ground clearance is 194mm.

Venucia is a sub-brand of the Dongfeng-Nissan joint venture, making various cars based on Nissan platforms. Up until recently these platforms were oldies that Nissan didn’t want anymore.

But that changed with the Venucia Chenfeng E30 which is based on the Nissan Leaf, and this new Venucia T90 is based on the current generation (2015) Nissan Murano.

Size: 4793/1865/1592, and wheelbase is 2765.

The interior looks very good albeit a bit dark with all that gray. The 12.3 inch touch screen is larger than anything Nissan has. Chinese car buyers need big touch screens, and bigger ones, and Venucia gives. The steering wheel has a flat bottom for sporty, and the center tunnel has a nice shiny control knob.

The dials are analogue, flanking a high resolution TFT screen.

The centerpiece of the interior is this enormous 12.3 inch (1920×768) touch screen. It looks a bit dirty here but that is because the protective plastic wasn’t taken off. This is very common in China, they always leave it on in media cars and test cars, and many car buyers prefer to leave it on as well!

The operation system for the infotainment is called IT-Commander, and that must be the best OS name in the world. It has Baidu CarLife but no Apple CarPlay. It does have a multimedia system with eight Bose speakers.

The graphics are… okay.

The graphics of the reversing system however look much better, especially the one on the right, showing the position of the car seen from above, virtually.

After all that tech you might expect a fancy gear selector. But no. Venucia fitted a huge gear lever instead that would not look out of place in a tractor.

The lever fits the engine; an ancient Nissan 2.0 liter four-cylinder petrol engine with just 144hp and 198nm, mated to a six-speed manual or a ‘Xtronic’ CVT. Venucia claims a 180km/h top speed and a 0-100 in 12.4 seconds.

Happily, the control knob looks great. It can be used to navigate the infotainment system if you do not like to touch. It also has a brilliant name.

Enough space for three but the seats are very flat. Anyway, with 144hp there won’t be much risk.

No wonder it needs such an advanced reversing system; the driver will see absolutely nothing through the rear window.

The grille, while being daring, also looks a bit messy.

No engine cover, and you want that old mill to be covered up.

Not the best part of the car. Too many layers. Too tall. Black strip between lights is nice. Pipe tips are fake. The real pipe is visible under the bumper on the left side.

Daring looks, crossing segments, great tech, but the old engine is going to kill it.