Moskvich 5 FAQ: your questions answered
These are the questions we are asked most often, in roughly the order we are asked them. Where the honest answer is "nobody knows yet", that is what it says.
What actually is a Moskvich 5?
A compact five-door crossover with five seats, a 1.5-litre turbocharged petrol engine, a CVT automatic gearbox and front-wheel drive. Roughly 4.5 metres long, 1.85 wide and 1.70 tall. In category terms it sits alongside the mainstream compact SUVs most British drivers already know.
Is it related to the old Soviet Moskviches?
By name only. The original Moscow factory built compact saloons for decades, production wound down in the early 2000s, and the badge was dormant for roughly twenty years before returning in the 2020s on an entirely new range. There is no engineering continuity between the old cars and this one.
What is it based on?
The Moskvich 5 is a rebadged JAC Sehol X6. JAC is a large, long-established Chinese manufacturer and the Sehol X6 is a mainstream crossover built in volume. This is the most useful single fact about the car, because it means the underlying engineering is ordinary and mass-produced rather than experimental.
Is it automatic?
Yes, and only automatic. It uses a CVT, which has no fixed gear ratios. There is no manual version of this model, so an automatic-only licence is no obstacle.
Is it diesel?
No. Petrol, and turbocharged. There is no diesel version and there is no naturally aspirated petrol version either — every Moskvich 5 has the 1.5 turbo.
How powerful is it?
Output varies by version across a range of roughly 136bhp to 184bhp. Ours produces around 150bhp, near the middle. This variation is wider than people expect, so it is worth establishing which version a specific car is rather than reasoning about "the model".
What is a CVT like to live with?
In town, better than a conventional automatic: there are no shift steps, so there is no small lurching in slow traffic. Demanding sudden full acceleration from 40mph produces the characteristic CVT behaviour of revs climbing to peak power and holding there while speed catches up. That is normal rather than a fault, and squeezing the throttle instead of stamping avoids most of it.
Is it reliable?
Ours has been, over a year of hire use — servicing, tyres, pads, wipers and nothing unscheduled. The one thing that genuinely matters is the transmission fluid, which a CVT is far less forgiving about than a torque-converter automatic. Change it on interval and the gearbox is undramatic; skip it repeatedly and it becomes expensive.
What nobody can honestly tell you is how these cars behave at very high mileage, because not enough of them have got there.
Can you get parts?
Yes, though sometimes under the JAC designation rather than the Moskvich one. The practical issue is not availability but familiarity: fewer independent garages have worked on the model, so diagnosis can take a phone call rather than a glance. Finding a garage before you need one solves nearly all of it.
What is the boot like? What is the fuel economy?
We are not going to give you numbers for either. Several figures circulate for both and they disagree with each other; we have not verified any against manufacturer documentation. From a year of handovers: the boot takes a large weekly shop plus two soft bags without folding a seat, and the car is not thirsty for its size. For precise figures, use the handbook of the exact version.
Is it any good?
Comfortable, quiet, easy and completely uninvolving. As transport it is a good answer; as something to enjoy driving it is not. Most people want the former most of the time.
Should I buy one?
If you keep cars a long time and drive mostly in a city, it makes sense. If you change every three years, the uncertain resale value of a revived badge is likely to eat the purchase saving, and that is the argument that should decide it.
Is it safe?
Safety equipment is conventional for a current compact crossover, but specification varies between versions enough that a general answer is not much use. Check the individual car rather than the model. This is true of most cars and unusually true of this one.
Is it expensive to insure?
Not inherently, but quotes vary more than usual between insurers because the vehicle is less familiar to their pricing models. That means shopping around is worth more here than on a common hatchback. Get quotes using the specific registration or version rather than reasoning from the model name.
Can I try one?
That is the whole reason we exist. There are very few in the UK, and hiring the Moskvich 5 in Salford for a day or a week is considerably easier than finding one to test drive.